The CPanel hosting control panel offers the ability to upload files to and from your hosting server. This can be used instead of an FTP client.
You might or might not know about FTP, which stands for File Transfer Protocol. This is a special program that you need to install on your PC to copy files to your hosting server.
Sometimes you use software programs that are installed on your server already to build your website, such as Joomla, Wordpress or other sitebuilding software. Sometimes these tools allow you to upload files without using an FTP client, but at some point you might run into a situation where you need to upload a number of files to your hosting server without using one of these tools.
It is at this point that you discover that you need something called an FTP client. An FTP client is therefore a piece of software that you install on your PC that will allow you to connect to your hosting server and to copy files. But you might not need to install an FTP client, your CPanel control panel of your hosting server already has the functionality built in to copy files to and from your hosting server.
If you log into your CPanel control panel with the username and password provided by your hosting company, you will see a link for 'File Manager'. Open the File Manager functionality in your control panel and let's see what you can do with it.
The first question that you will have to answer is if you want to make 'public_html' the folder that should display by default, and whether you want to be able to see hidden files; answer yes to both these questions.
It offers a familiar type of interface where you can browse through the files on your server, with a tree type layout with folders on the left and files on the right hand side.
One of the cool things that you can do with the File manager is to quickly upload and download a lot of files at the same time. You do this by using ZIPped files.
First zip all the files on your PC into one ZIP archive. You can then Upload this zip archive into the right location on your server. Once the file has been uploaded, select 'Extract'. This will quickly extract all the files into that location. You need to remember not to zip at the FOLDER level, but to zip your individual files!
In the same way you can select a number of files in your file manager and select 'Compress'. Choose the ZIP format as the option to compress the files. One zip file will be created that you can then download to your hard disk by selecting the 'Download' link.
These file management options make it really easy to quickly download and upload files if you do not have immediate access to an FTP client such as when you are traveling, or if you want to save time by zipping and unzipping files before uploading or downloading.
Author Resource:
Christine Anderssen is the owner of Tailormade4you and offers web design in South Africa as well as web hosting services tailored for Joomla
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