Secure Site Files Access with SFTP and HostGator

If you own a web hosting account, it is very likely that you use FTP access to upload and download files for your website. FTP which stands for “File Transfer Protocol” is an insecure protocol by nature. The username and password are transferred in plain text! This means that they could be captured by others and gain access to your site.

It is highly recommended that you never use FTP and instead use the alternative secure protocol, the SFTP. SFTP stands for “Secure File Transfer Protocol”. More specifically SFTP is FTP using SSH. SFTP allows you to have a secure channel between your computer and the File server that you upload your files to. Everything is encrypted including the username and password.

So now that you understand the importance of using SFTP to transfer your files, it’s time to explain how to use it. First of all, your web hosting company should support SFTP. SFTP should be included in the web-hosting account features as well. HostGator supports SFTP for all its web-hosting account types.

HostGator is the best web hosting company I have ever experienced and has an outstanding unparalleled support team. What I am going to show you is how to setup your FTP client to use SFTP with HostGator. The FTP client that we are going to use is FileZilla which is free.

1. Signup with HostGator (if you don’t yet have an account with them). If you have your files on another web hosting company, HostGator can move your files to their servers for free after signup.
2. Download and Install FileZilla.
3. Start FileZilla.
4. From the Menu bar, Click “File” then choose “Site Manager…”
5. Click “New Site” button.
6. Type in any name you want.
7. Now, in the right pane and with the “General” tab selected, enter the following info in the form
   1. Host: enter the domain of your account, (example: domain.com)
   2. Port: 2222
   3. Server Type: select “SFTP – SSH File Transfer Protocol”
   4. Logon Type: select “Normal”.
   5. User: Type here the user name of your cPanel account.
   6. Password: Type in the password of your cPanel account.
8. Click “Connect”. (when you see a “Unknown Host Key” dialog, check the “Always trust this host, add this key to the cache” checkbox and click the “OK” button)

Using FileZilla,

Note: FileZilla is available on a range of Operating Systems (Windows, Linux and Mac), but the following instructions were applied for the client on a Windows platform.

• You can now always use “Site Manager” (accessed by File, Site Manager…) to connect to any site you have setup.
• When connected to your site, you will see at the right pane of the FileZilla interface your remote files. (“Remote Site:” )
• To open the root directory of the your site, just go to “public_html” directory of your account
• To download a file, right click the file and select “Download”, the file will be downloaded to the current local folder.
• At the left pane, you can see your local computer folders. To upload a file, right click the file then select “Upload”, it will be uploaded to the current remote folder.
• You can also drag and drop files between the panes.
• A bit advanced tip: You can also drag a file from a live desktop (or folder); select the file and hold down the mouse button, then drag to the FileZilla entry point in the taskbar, then wait for a second, FileZilla interface will show up, keep holding the mouse button and drag it to the remote folder you want the file to be at.

Now explore the rest of FileZilla yourself and remember to always use SFTP :)

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