Steve Frank’s article on Don’t Use FTP has been posted on various social news sites, and I think it is an excellent piece how this 20+ year old protocol should have retired from being the stock standard of transferring files at many web hosting companies. It is not secure (not guaranteed even when FTPS is used), it is a PITA for those setting up firewalls, and it is definitely not the best protocol for developers to automate file transfer. Why many shared hosting companies provide only FTP for file upload is beyond me.