How to setup ftp server in windows 8 & window 10.

You can give access to your FTP site by restricting users with user name/password or anonymous access. It depends the purpose of FTP server on your internal or external network.

Setup FTP Server on Windows 8 or Windows 8.1

1) Open Programs and Features in Control panel. Click on ‘Turn Windows features on or off’ as shown below(1).

If IIS was not installed earlier on particular Windows 8 or 8.1 computer, you need to install other features of IIS too ( as shown by arrow marks). See the below screenshot for the actual requirements to run FTP server on Windows 8/8.1 (All features which are ticked need to be installed).

Press OK to install the selected features.

2) After installation is completed, open ‘Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager’ in ‘Administrative Tools’ – Control Panel.

Expand the sites, right click on it and ‘Add FTP Site’.

Recommended Readings:

3) Give a name for FTP site and browse the local folder which you need to give access to others through FTP server. (I already created a folder called ‘FTP Share’ on C drive before reaching this step)

4) In next screen you need to select the local computer’s IP address from drop down box. I hope you have already set up static IP for the computer.

Under SSL option, select No SSL to make the connection without SSL certificate. In production environment for professional FTP server setup, you may need to enable SSL which requires a certificate.

How to Set Up FTP Access Permission on Windows 8 or 8.1

5) In next screen you can set the permission for users to access the FTP site. Here you need to decide how others will be accessing the FTP share and who will be having Read-only or Read & Write access.

Let’s assume this scenario, you want specific users to have read and write access, so obviously they must type an user name and password for it. Other users can access the FTP site without any username or password to view the content only, it’s called anonymous users access.

You will find several ways to do this, but here is the simple way which worked for me.

Firstly, create a group on Windows 8 local computer (if you are not using active directory environment) and add the users who will be having read and write access on FTP site. In this example I have created ‘ftpusers’ group and added required users inside it.

You must give ‘Modify’ access (Windows permission) for this group to specific folder which is linked to FTP site. ‘FTP share’ is the one in this example.

Now, let’s continue the FTP site settings. In next screen to give the permission, select ‘Basic’ which will be prompting for user name and password, select Specified  roles or groups option from drop down and type the correct group name. Set Read and Write permission for the group.

Press Finish to complete the setup.

By default Basic Authentication is enabled on Windows 8 or 8.1, but you can cross check it. Open ‘FTP Authentication’ settings of the site and make sure Basic Authentication is enabled as shown below.

Now, lets set up the anonymous users access with read only permission.

Open ‘FTP Authorization Rules’ for the FTP site you created. Create an ‘Add Allow Rule’ and set the permissions as below.

Make sure that second rule also listed.

You need to enable anonymous access under FTP Authentication settings of the site.

Check the Firewall ! It should allow FTP traffic.

We are almost done and completed the all necessary steps. Now, you need to either disable the firewall or allow FTP inbound and outbound traffic on Windows 8 or 8.1 computer. I hope you can do it easily.

Now, I could use any FTP clients and connect with a user name and password with write access, or anonymous user with read only access.