Chapter 3. FTP and cPanel’s File Manager

It is most likely that one of the first things you will want to do after getting your web hosting account, and taking a quick look at cPanel’s interface, is get some files onto your website. So how do you accomplish this? The most common method is via something called FTP. If you have ever downloaded anything on the Internet before, you have likely used FTP, perhaps without even realizing it. FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol. It is a method of transferring files from remote locations to your local computer (called downloading) and vice versa (sending files from your computer to a remote location is called uploading).

In this chapter we will cover most methods that cPanel provides to enable you to transfer files to and from your web hosting account, including:

• Discussing methods of uploading files to your hosting account
• Learning about the types of FTP clients available
• Learning how to work with FTP
• Accessing the main FTP account
• Creating FTP accounts and placing limits on those accounts
• Deleting FTP accounts
• Checking FTP quotas for accounts you create
• Managing Anonymous FTP access
• Monitoring FTP access and killing FTP sessions
• SFTP (Secure FTP)
• FXP (File Exchange Protocol)
• Navigating your site with the cPanel file manager
• Uploading files and downloading files, editing and managing files with the file manager
• WYSIWYG HTML editing via WYSIWYG Pro in the file manager

Before discussing FTP and other file transfer methods in cPanel, we need to learn a bit more about the various types of FTP tools that you can use.