Manage files with File Manager

File Manager lets you work with your website’s files straight from the control panel, with nothing to install. For a whole site or thousands of files, SFTP is faster.

Open File Manager

Sign in to the control panel and open Websites.
Select the website.
Select Files in the website’s navigation bar.

File Manager opens in the website’s home folder. Your site’s public files go in public_html, its document root: anything in that folder can be visited in a browser. Files outside it, such as .bashrc and .profile, are settings for the website’s own account; leave them alone unless you know you need them.

File Manager showing the public_html folder with one file, index.html, and its menu open. Marker 1 is beside the folder tree, marker 2 beside the New button, marker 3 beside the Upload button, marker 4 beside the file menu with Edit, Download, Get info, Cut, Copy, Rename, Compress, Uncompress, Permissions (CHMOD) and Delete, and marker 5 beside Select all.

Double-click a folder to open it, and select the arrow beside the folder’s name to go back up. The folder tree marker 1 takes you straight to any folder.

Upload files

Open the folder to upload into, usually public_html.
Select Upload marker 3, then File to pick files or Folder to upload a whole folder.

To upload a site that comes as a .zip file, upload the .zip, then select Uncompress from its menu to extract it in place. This is much quicker than uploading each file.

Create a file or folder

Select New marker 2, then File or Folder, enter a name and select Create.

Edit a file

Select the menu button (three dots) at the end of the file’s row, then Edit.
Make your changes in the editor.
Select Save, then Close.

The File Manager editor with public_html/index.html open, showing three lines of HTML, and the Close and Save buttons at the top right.

Other actions

Each file’s menu marker 4 has:

Action	What it does
Edit	Opens a text file in the editor
Download	Saves the file to your computer
Get info	Shows the file’s full path, permissions, last change and size
Cut, Copy	Pick up the file to move or copy it. Then open the destination and select Paste, or choose Paste from the destination folder’s menu.
Rename	Changes the file’s name
Compress	Packs the file or folder into an archive
Uncompress	Extracts an archive such as a `.zip`
Permissions (CHMOD)	Changes who can read, write and run the file
Delete	Removes the file

To act on several items at once, select a row, then hold Ctrl and select more, or use Select all marker 5. A bar at the bottom of the screen offers Download, Delete, Cut, Copy, Paste and Compress for the whole selection.

Fix file and folder permissions

Permissions decide who can read, change and run each file. Wrong permissions are a common cause of “403 Forbidden” errors, or of a site that cannot save uploads.

The Permissions dialog for a file with Owner set to 6, Group to 4 and World to 4, an Apply recursively option, and Cancel and Save buttons.

Select the file’s or folder’s menu button, then Permissions (CHMOD).
Choose the numbers for Owner, Group and World.
For a folder, tick Apply recursively to give everything inside it the same permissions.
Select Save.

The usual values are 644 for files (owner 6, group 4, world 4) and 755 for folders you create. Leave public_html itself as it is (750). Never use 777: it lets anyone on the server change the file, and some software refuses to run with it.

Use SFTP for big jobs

Uploading a whole site, or thousands of small files, is quicker with an SFTP app such as FileZilla. See Connect with SFTP and SSH.