ProFTP Connection refused

ProFTP Connection refused

I have a MacPorts installed ProFTPD daemon installed. It worked like a
charm for a year. Now it does not work at all anymore. I wrote to MacPorts
and ProFTP, but no answers there as of yet so I hope someone here can help
me out.
Found some troubleshooting tips here. When I check for ProTPD processes I get
ps -ef | grep proftpd
0 58 1 0 4Aug13 ?? 0:00.77 /opt/local/bin/daemondo
--label=proftpd --start-cmd
/opt/local/etc/LaunchDaemons/org.macports.proftpd/proftpd.wrapper
start ; --stop-cmd
/opt/local/etc/LaunchDaemons/org.macports.proftpd/proftpd.wrapper stop
; --restart-cmd
/opt/local/etc/LaunchDaemons/org.macports.proftpd/proftpd.wrapper
restart ; --pid=none
501 27233 26992 0 1:42PM ttys000 0:00.00 grep proftpd
So it seems some processes are running.
When I used the following command to see if port 21 is active:
sudo lsof -i :21
I get zero results
It all worked really well before, but now all I get is:
ftp localhost
Trying ::1...
ftp: Can't connect to `::1': Connection refused
Trying 127.0.0.1...
ftp: Can't connect to `127.0.0.1': Connection refused
Trying fe80::1%lo0...
ftp: Can't connect to `fe80::1%lo0': Connection refused
ftp: Can't connect to `localhost'
Does anyone here know what I am missing here? I need it back to to the
sweet any easy updating of local website copies.