FileZilla

This guide will walk you through configuring FileZilla for the Simple Hosting platform.

FileZilla is free open-source software that is well-known for being easy to use, powerful, and versatile. This client, initially a pure FTP client, works nicely with Gandi Simple Hosting because it also supports sFTP (Simple Hosting does not accept FTP connections for security reasons).

You can download the FileZilla client directly from their project’s website: https://filezilla-project.org/

Login information

First, locate the sFTP login information by navigating to: „Simple Hosting“ -> „Your Instance“ -> „Sites“ -> „www.example.com“ -> „sFTP“).

The sFTP login information you’ll need to configure FileZilla are :

  • User: A unique numerical username

  • Password: This is the password defined when creating the instance

  • Server: A hostname for the sFTP server you’ll be connecting to

Adding a site to the Site Manager

FileZilla has a site manager (CTRL+S) that allows you to save the connection information for all of your sites, whether they use FTP or sFTP.

Click on “File” on the top menu bar, and choose “Site Manager”. This will bring up the little window where you can add your sFTP login information. Be sure to first click on the “New site” button, then choose sFTP as the protocol and “Normal” as the Logon type.

  • Next to „Host:“, enter the server address

  • Next to „User:“, enter the instance username

  • Next to „Password:“, enter the instance password

Connecting to the instance

You can then click on the „Connect“ button to proceed, where you might see the following alert :

The server's host key is unknown. You have no guarantee that the server is the computer you think it is
Host: sftp.sd3.gpaas.net:22
Fingerprint: ssh-rsa 2048 35:e0:5a:a9:54:12:55:6b:ce:41:8c:c1:9e:35:1d:f6
Trust this host and carry on connecting?``

Click on “Always trust this host, add this key to the cache”, and click OK to continue. You will then be connected to your server, and will see a window that displays the contents of your instance (the contents may vary depending on the type of instance and its version).

Uploading files

Now that you’re connected to the instance, you can double-click on the vhosts folder icon to go to where your virtualhosts are located. Once here, you will see a bunch of folders that correspond to the name of a website (virtualhost) that you specified to be hosted by your Simple Hosting instance.

Navigate to the virtualhost you wish to upload files into, and then you can drag-and-drop files from the local window pane, to the remote window pane, dropping the files into the desired folder. Public website files should be placed inside the htdocs folder, for example:

/lamp0/web/vhosts/www.example.com/htdocs/

Bemerkung

You will manage the folder creation, file moving, renaming, rights etc. via your sFTP client. We have been using FileZilla in this example, and so right-clicking on a folder or file will bring up a little menu that presents you with these options. You will need to see with your sFTP client instructions for assistance with those types of operations, however they are usually straight forward.