How to update your cPanel-hosted website via FTP

You may be wishing there was an easy way to update your website via FTP. Well, there is! Here’s how:

1
Log in. You should arrive at the Domain Management screen. If you're already logged in, click on ACCOUNT in the top-right corner and select Domain Management.
2
If you’ve purchased traditional web hosting from Porkbun ( How to set up traditional cPanel web hosting), you’ll see a green icon that says "cPanel" to the right of your domain name. Click it.
3
On the Web Hosting screen, click “Login” in the Control Panel box
4
Now that you’re logged into cPanel, click the “FTP Accounts” button in the “FILES” section.

FTP Account settings

The FTP Accounts screen is where you can set up the FTP account you’ll use to manually update our website.

Here's how to set up the various fields:

  • Log In: Type the username you’ll use to log in over FTP. Some examples are: admin, webmaster, etc.
  • Password: Type the password you wish to use for the above account. It can be the same as your account password, or different.
  • Directory: Type: public_html to give this FTP login access to your entire website. If you’d like to restrict access to a subfolder of your website, you can instead enter: public_html/subfolder

⚠️️  Alert

The directory field must be set to public_html and nothing else as indicated in the above image. If you don't clear out the field and replace it with public_html then uploads won't go to the right directory and you'll have to delete the FTP account and repeat these steps.

  • Quota: Leave “Unlimited” checked unless you need to limit the amount of data this email account can upload to your website.

Once you’ve got everything looking right, click Create FTP Account to create the account. You’re now ready to log in!

Logging in

To retrieve your login credentials, click the gear icon or “Configure FTP Client” under  FTP Accounts near the bottom of the page. 

Note that your FTP username is your  Log In name @ your Domain. You must enter the entire FTP Username when logging in via FTP, not just the Log In name.

You can simply copy and paste the FTP Username and FTP Server into your FTP client, or you can also download pre-built configuration files for your FTP client of choice in the  Configuration Files section. Click the blue “FTP Configuration File” that matches your FTP client, and a configuration file will download that can be imported into your FTP client by following the linked instructions underneath the download link.

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