use ncftp to upload whole directories using ftp

yesterday, i came across the problem of figuring out how to transfer a whole directory to a hosting site which allowed no ssh access. without ssh, it wasn't possible to copy a tar file and untar it. the only protocol available was ftp. ftp doesn't allow you to upload a whole directory. if you use `mput *`, it will upload all the files within the directory, but it will not recurse into sub-directories.

i found a script someone had written that actually allowed downloading a full directory recursively. and there were a few posts that mentioned a `curl -T` way of doing it, but i couldn't get it to work.

then i hit upon ncftp, that worked really well.

simply:

ncftp -u username -p password ftp.somedomain.com

and when inside the ftp shell,

put -R somedir