How do create an FTP in my Mac?

Yes ... you can, but I would strongly recommend against it. FTP is really insecure and you're giving the outside world easy access to your computer. And, unless you do a bit of work, you'll not just be opening up one folder for sharing, but risking your whole computer.

If you want to go ahead, there are a couple of things you need to do. First, go to the Sharing panel of System Preferences, and turn Sharing on. Under the Shared Folders box, click "+" and choose a folder to share. Click Options and turn on "Share files and folders using FTP".

Next, if you have a router on your network (ie a gateway between the internet connection and your computer), you'll need to set up port forwarding and forward ports 20 and 21 to your computer's internal IP address. If you don't have a router, you won't need this step.

That's it. However: as I said above, I would look for an alternative solution if possible. If you have any online web hosting or storage space, set up an FTP account there and direct your contacts to send files to that address.

If you know what you're doing, FTP access is no more a security risk than anything else on your Mac. I recommend using SFTP over FTP. It's a secure protocol with encrypted passwords, whereas FTP uses plaintext passwords and data transmission. Put SFTP users in an 'sftp' group and put those users in a chroot jail (sandbox environment).

How do you forward ports?

You are probably referring to port forwarding on a router.

You should really start a new thread. Listing your router make n model number and what service you want to run i.e ftp.

Sure. Go to the "Sharing" preferences pane and check "File Sharing." In its options menu, select "Share files and folders using FTP" (with a warning that the protocol is insecure).

How do you forward ports?

Aaron Welch wrote:
How do you forward ports?

Read the manual/user guide that came w/your router.