Problem solved: FTP and Windows 2003 Firewall

Since I'm new to blogging I didn't know how to use my own domain name with this blog. A quick Google revealed that the way it works is that I simply use Blogger as usual but whenever I publish anything it is published to my web server using FTP.

I have my own web server and currently do not use FTP so I had to set that up. I'm using Windows 2003 Server Enterprise Edition SP1 and I wanted to use the FTP server that comes with it (IIS 6). I have set up FTP on Windows before so I didn't think it would be a problem, but that was before the Windows firewall...

After setting up configuring and starting my FTP server I had no problem to log on to it, but I got a timeout right away when the FTP client (I was simply using IE6 as my FTP client) tried to do the initial directory listing. Same thing when I tried to publish from Blogger. Using localhost on the server itself or using the console FTP client - ftp.exe - in Windows XP SP2 worked fine however.

I'll skip all the Googling, MSDN search, trial and error and try to make a long story short:

I found out that there seems to be a problem with the Windows Firewall. On the Exceptions tab I had made an exception for FTP on TCP port 21 but as it turned out that did not work but I had to go to the Advanced tab, select my connection under Network Connection Settings and click the Settings button. From there check FTP Server and voìla, it works.

Why there is a difference between making the exception from the Exceptions tab or the Advanced tab I don't know, probably a bug if you ask me. But right now I don't care about that - I'm just happy that it's working!