cPanel file manager and FTP tutorial

If you are looking for an easy way to manage your account's files and folders without the need to install third party FTP clients such as FileZilla or CuteFTP, the cPanel File Manager is the ideal solution for you.

 

Using the cPanel File Manager

The cPanel File Manager provides an easy to use fully featured interface accessible via any browser that allows you to perform a wide range of actions on your account hosted data. To access the File Manager, please login into your cPanel and refer to the Files and FTP section.

 

 

Clicking for the first time on the cPanel File Manager icon will prompt you with a Directory Selection box to choose the desired directory you would like to access.

The Home Directory option will lead you to the root directory of your hosting account. If you choose the Web Root option you will be directed to your public_html folder which is the main publicly accessible folder of your account. If you do not want to have this box displayed again in the future, please uncheck the "Always open this directory..." checkbox and click on the Go button.

This will redirect you to the cPanel File Manager interface. On the left side of your screen you will see the directory tree of your hosting account and on the right side will be the content of your current folder. Above the two sections are the available tools to manage your account files and folders.

To view your files located under the public_html directory simply click on the icon on the left. This will reload the content on the right part of the file manager.

The first few icons from file manager navigation menu allows you to create a new file or folder, copy, move or upload a new file on your hosting account. If you would like to download a specific file to your local computer simply click on the file in question and use the Download icon at the top. Following the same steps you can also remove a file or folder of your hosting account by using the Delete icon.

If you would like to edit a file under your account simply click on the file and use the edit tools available. Depending on the file type you can use the simple editor, the code editor or the HTML editor. For simple text files you can use the Edit icon, for PHP files you may use the code editor. In case you would like to edit a simple html page, you may use the HTML editor.

If you are looking for a fast way to upload multiply files or a whole folder under your hosting account you may compress it on your local computer and upload the archive using the upload option. When the archive is uploaded under your account click on the newly uploaded file and use the Extract icon from the top to unzip the archive on your hosting account.

In case you would like to generate an archive of an existing folder simply select the folder and click on the Compress icon to generate a new archive.

 

Further reading:
 

How To Create, Edit, and Delete a File in CPanel Using File Manager

Beginner Guide to cPanel Control Panel

Getting Familiar With the cPanel User Environment

CPanel Security

CPanel Login Tutorial

CPanel Account Information Tutorial

How to access raw log files

 
 
How to optimize your website to use less server resources

 

How to Manage FTP Accounts in cPanel

All hosting accounts can be accessed via FTP using your default cPanel username and password. As a master account, the cPanel logins provides you with full access to your files and folders hosted under your account. For more information on how to access your account using a FTP client, please check our FTP tutorial.

If you would like to create an additional FTP accounts with different access to your account you can do so via your cPanel ? FTP Accounts section.

Via the cPanel FTP Accounts page you can create new or modify existing FTP accounts. To create a new FTP account you will need to fill in the login details and the access directory of the account as well as the allowed disk space quote for the account.

The Login field is used to form your new FTP account username. For example, if your domain name is mydomain.com and you fill in 'myftp' in the login field, your FTP account username will be:

myftp@mydomain.com

The password field determines the FTP password for the newly created FTP account.

Next, you should input the home directory of your FTP account. By default the folder will be filled in automatically but you can change the path. The FTP account directory determines the root folder that will be accessible to the FTP account. If you would like to have all files and folders of your account accessible via the new FTP account just leave the Directory field empty. This will give root access to the new FTP account.

In case you would like to have only your public folder accessible, please set public_html. To limit the access of the FTP account to a specific folder just input the path to the directory in question. This way the FTP account will not be able to access files or folders outside the its home directory.

Last, please input the desired quota for your FTP account. If you would like to limit the total size of the files that can be uploaded by this FTP account simply input the value in megabytes.

When you are ready with your new FTP account configuration click on the Create FTP account.

Via this section you can modify or completely remove your FTP account. The available options allows you to change the password or quota of your FTP account as well as configure a FTP client such as FileZilla, Core FTP or Cyberduck

For more information on how to download and configure your FTP client, please check our FTP clients tutorial.

 

Further reading:
 

How To Create, Edit, and Delete a File in CPanel Using File Manager

Beginner Guide to cPanel Control Panel

Getting Familiar With the cPanel User Environment

CPanel Security

CPanel Login Tutorial

CPanel Account Information Tutorial

How to access raw log files

 

How to optimize your website to use less server resources

 

How to review the disk space usage of your account

cPanel provides detailed statistics on your account disk usage. Using the Disk Usage tool available in your account's control panel you can optimize your disk usage utilization and free additional space if needed. Maintaining your hosting account improves the general shared hosting health and optimize the backup process for all shared hosting customers.

To access your Disk Usage statistics, please login your cPanel and refer to the Files section.

This will redirect you to a dedicated page in your cPanel with detailed overview of your account disk space utilization showing the exact size of each file and folder of your account. Depending on the number of files hosted on your account and its size the disk space calculation may take up to a few minutes to display the data.

Below the disk space graphic you may review your account directory tree and sort your list by name or disk usage to locate the biggest files and folders of your account.

Using the directory tree you may expand the parent folders of your account to locate the biggest files or subfolders.

Due to the nature of how files are stored electronically, most files occupy slightly more disk space than their actual size. For example, a 300 byte file may occupy 4 kB of actual disk space. This may cause discrepancies between the data you see in the File Manager versus the information you find in the table. Moreover, the disk space usage in the table indicates how much space the directories' contents use, not how much space the directory itself uses.

Directories themselves usually use a negligible amount of disk space unless they contain a large number of files or subdirectories.

 

Further reading:
 

How To Create, Edit, and Delete a File in CPanel Using File Manager

Beginner Guide to cPanel Control Panel

Getting Familiar With the cPanel User Environment

CPanel Security

CPanel Login Tutorial

CPanel Account Information Tutorial

How to access raw log files

 

How to optimize your website to use less server resources

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