Connection Information Needed – can’t get it connected

ok i am trying to work with a gallery album plugin nextgen, and also simply trying to upgrade a plugin. I am getting the screen that says “connection information” and then asks for hostname, username, password.

isn’t this just asking for the exact same thing I use to login my FTP program (i use fetch)? so the IP address is the hostname, username is the username from my FTP login, and password again from ftp login.

when i put that in there i get the message “cannot find wp-content folder”

when i try to switch the hostname to something more exact like ip address/webspace/httpdocs/mysitefoldername/

it says “Failed to connect to FTP Server ipaddress/webspace/httpdocs/mysitefoldername/wp-content:21”

i don’t know what the 21 means.

help?!