Guide: uploading your website yourself

For anyone who has downloaded their website and is putting it online with a hosting provider themselves. Takes about 15 minutes.

1What you need

• Web hosting with your own domain (e.g. ihr-betrieb.ch) – from a Swiss hosting provider for a few francs a month. For the PHP version, the hosting must support PHP 7.4 or newer – which is the case almost everywhere today.
• FTP login details: server, username and password. You'll find them in your hosting provider's welcome email or in the hosting panel under “FTP”.
• An FTP program, e.g. the free FileZilla (Windows, Mac, Linux). Many hosting providers also offer a “File Manager” in the browser – that works just as well.
• The ZIP file of your website (“Download” button on the “Your website is ready” page).

2HTML or PHP?

3Upload

1. Unzip the ZIP: right-click the file → “Extract All” (Windows) or double-click it (Mac). You'll get a folder with index.html or index.php, style.css and the bilder folder.
2. Open FileZilla and enter the server, username, password and port at the top (port 21 for FTP, 22 for SFTP – SFTP is more secure if your hosting provider offers it). Click “Quickconnect”.
3. Open the right folder (right-hand side): it's usually called public_html, httpdocs, www or web. If there's already an index.html from your hosting provider (“A new website is coming soon”), delete it.
4. Select the contents of the unzipped folder (left) and drag them to the right – all files and folders (bilder, inc, language folders such as fr). Important: the contents, not the folder itself.
5. Open it in the browser: ihr-betrieb.ch. Does everything look good? Done! If you still see the old page, reload with Ctrl+F5 (Mac: Cmd+Shift+R).

Changed something later? Download the new version and simply upload the files again – FileZilla will ask whether you want to overwrite: “Yes, for all”. Exception: don't overwrite your customised inc/einstellungen.php file.

4Secure with https

Turn on the free SSL certificate in the hosting panel (usually “Let's Encrypt” or “SSL/TLS”). Your website will then be reachable at https://, with a padlock in the browser – important for Google and for your visitors' trust.

5Contact form & email

PHP version only. The settings are in the file inc/einstellungen.php – you can download it with FileZilla, edit it with a text editor (e.g. Notepad++ or VS Code, not Word) and upload it again.

1. Check the recipient: FIRMA_EMAIL shows where enquiries are sent.
2. Test: open https://ihr-betrieb.ch/mailtest.php?k=… in the browser and click “Send test email”. Check your inbox and spam folder. You'll find the exact link in the LIESMICH.txt file and at the top of inc/einstellungen.php.
3. Nothing arriving? Then enter your mailbox's SMTP details in inc/einstellungen.php – the same as in Outlook or on your phone: SMTP_SERVER (outgoing mail server), SMTP_PORT (usually 587), SMTP_BENUTZER (your email address) and SMTP_PASSWORT. Then test again – if there's an error, the test page shows exactly what's wrong.
4. Emails ending up in spam? If your website and email are with different providers, use SMTP (step 3) – or allow your hosting provider's mail server in your domain's SPF record (see your provider's help, keyword “SPF”).

const FIRMA_EMAIL = 'info@ihr-betrieb.ch';

const SMTP_SERVER     = 'mail.ihr-betrieb.ch';
const SMTP_PORT       = 587;
const SMTP_SICHERHEIT = 'tls';
const SMTP_BENUTZER   = 'info@ihr-betrieb.ch';
const SMTP_PASSWORT   = '••••••••';

6Common problems

I see a list of files or “403 Forbidden”.

The files are in the wrong folder (e.g. in a subfolder). Move the contents directly into the domain's main folder.

Images are missing or the page looks unstyled.

The bilder folder or the style.css file wasn't uploaded. Upload everything again.

PHP code appears or the page stays blank.

Your hosting doesn't support PHP (or has too old a version). Turn on PHP 8 in the hosting panel – or use the HTML version.

Special characters like ä, é, ü look wrong.

A file was edited with the wrong program. Save it as “UTF-8” with Notepad++ or VS Code.

The contact form reports an error.

Open the test page (see above) – it shows the exact reason. SMTP usually fixes it.

Changes aren't showing.

Browser cache: reload with Ctrl+F5. Or the new version wasn't uploaded.