FTP ISSUES

Don't make aliases from the Finder because those aren't recognized properly by ftp. Your external HD is in /Volumes/<name of HD>. You could either just have them navigate to that directory in their FTP client or you could make a symbolic link (the Unix equivalent of an alias) from your public folder to that by opening Terminal and typing:

ln -s /Volumes/<name of HD> ~/Public

Hopefully that will work

 

Here is an opinion...

The built in FTP services in OSX leasve a lot to be desired. NOT to go off on a tangent here...I gave up on them as I set up an FTP server for a client and it ended up being a nightmare because of permission (Or lack there of) issues...So I shopped around to find another way to achieve this...The end result is a program called "iNetCourier".

This ended up being everything and more. First of all its web based using port 8080 instead of standard FTP 20/21. The first thing I noticed that was better was that there were no more permission issues. Secondly, set up and even customization was a snap. Thirdly, and most important, becuase the client has ADSL when the FTP was accessed it would drag the whole network down to a crawl. With using the iNetCourier, because its using Alt. Web port 8080, the traffic seems too flow a lot more smoothly and does not have such a noticable effect on speed to the rest of the organization.

Hope this helps.