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Uploading files over SFTP

You upload files to your site over SFTP. It is an encrypted connection, so neither your password nor your files cross the network in readable form. For security reasons plain, unencrypted FTP is not permitted.

Your login details

Open the site and go to the SFTP access tab. There you find:

  • the Server name and the Port number,
  • the username, which is the site's identifier (for example example-com),
  • and the Connection address, which gives all of this as one sftp:// address.

Always take the port from the card: it is not the usual 21 or 22.

If the card says SFTP is not reachable from outside yet, you can manage the site's contents in the browser on the Files tab in the meantime. Files of up to 1 MiB can be uploaded there. You can still create the password in advance.

Password

The password is generated for you:

  1. Click Create password, or later Generate new password.
  2. The password is shown once and is not kept on our side either. Copy it before you close the window.
  3. Generating a new password invalidates the old one immediately, so update every saved connection. The server picks up the new password within a few seconds; if the first attempt is refused, wait a moment and try again.

You connect to a hosting site with the password; SSH key login is not available for hosting sites. A connection allows at most three failed login attempts.

Connecting with FileZilla

  1. On the SFTP access tab, click Download FileZilla profile. The profile contains no password.
  2. In FileZilla, choose File → Import… and load the profile.
  3. Enter your password when you connect.

Any other SFTP client (WinSCP or Cyberduck, for example) works too: choose SFTP as the protocol and copy the server, port and username from the card.

Where do the files go?

The connection opens in your site's own directory and cannot leave it. The website's files go into the web/ folder: that is the root of the website. The private/ folder is not visible on the web — a place for backups or configuration files, for example. Logs are in the logs/ folder.

If the old code still runs after an upload

PHP caches compiled code and notices changes by the files' modification times. If your upload program preserves the files' original dates, the old code can stay in effect. Restart the site on the PHP settings tab: that clears the cache too.