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(S)FTP

FTP or SFTP lets you connect to the filesystem of a remote server, to upload or download files.

Read more on Wikipedia

SFTP is the secure successor of FTP and is currently the standard for many servers or providers.

🎉 Getting started

To connect to a remote server via FTP, you will need:

  • The host domain or IP-Address
  • A username
  • A password

And sometimes if you don’t want to access the root level, but a predefined directory:

  • a remote path, e.g. /var/usr/me/my-projects/my-project

Is’s possible via command line, but a client software will make it much easier for you. For example there is:

🦆 Connecting with Cyberduck

  1. Prepare your login credentials and open Cyberduck
  2. Click on New Connection or Neue Verbindung
  3. A new window pops up, enter your credentials:
    • Select your Protocol, SFTP or FTP
    • Put server address (host or IP)
    • Your username
    • The password
  4. Click on connect

You will now see the file structure of the remote server.

📤 Uploading and editing files

  • For uploading you can drag files onto the window or synchronize a local folder with a remote folder
  • You can also edit files, by left-clicking on it, and the select to open it with a text editor of your choice
  • Downloading is easy, just drag the files you need somewhere onto your computer

🛠 Troubleshooting

If you can’t connect:

  • Are your credentials correct?
  • Can you connect to other FTP-Servers? (Some public WiFi networks don’t allow FTP)
  • If you had entered a remote path, does this path exist on the remote server?
  • When using SFTP with FileZilla, you might have to prepend sftp:// to your server address

If you can’t edit:

  • Do you have editing rights? Especially on servers of large organizations, rights are restricted to the required minimum. Maybe you will need to ask for editing rights.

If you’re lost:

  • It can happen, that you landed in the root directory of the sever, which can look very confusing. Often you will look for a directory called htdocs or www or web or docs to land in the directory where websites live. Or mybe you will have to ask for help :) But, to avoid that in the future, many FTP clients have an option to set a remote path which would bring you directly to the desired folder. (in Cyberduck this feature is seemingly not very visible or inexistent).