The site is ready on your computer, FileZilla is connected, and now you just drag. Almost. There are three decisions you take before dragging, and they decide whether the site opens first time or whether you spend the afternoon asking why it does not.
1. The right folder, which is not always the same one
| What you have |
Where it goes |
| The account’s main domain |
public_html . That is the site root. |
| An addon domain |
Its own folder, created by cPanel when you added it. The name is written in the cPanel domain list: go and look rather than guess. |
| A subdomain |
Also its own folder, created the moment the subdomain was made. |
| Anything outside those |
Not published. It sits on the server, uses space, and never appears on the internet. It is the number one cause of «I uploaded everything and the site did not change». |
2. The contents of the folder, not the folder
If the site lives in a folder called, say, my-site, open that folder and upload what is inside it. Drag the folder itself and you end up with the site at public_html/my-site/ and that extra piece stuck on the end of every address. The site works, in the wrong place, and fixing it afterwards is more work than doing it right once.
The entry file, index.html or index.php, has to sit directly inside public_html. One folder down and the visitor gets a list of files instead of a website: that is explained in the Index of listing.
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If an old index.html is left beside the new index.php, only one of the two is shown, and it may not be the one you expect. That explains almost every case of «I installed it and I still see the old page». Delete or rename the one you do not want, and do not leave both.
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3. Lots of small files: zip first
FTP opens a conversation per file. With ten files you never notice; with ten thousand, the conversation takes longer than the data. A WordPress site or a shop easily runs to tens of thousands of tiny files.
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On your computer, zip the whole thing into one file.
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Upload that one file over FTP. One big file goes up far faster than a thousand small ones of the same total weight.
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Unzip it on the server, in the cPanel file manager: select the zip and choose Extract.
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Delete the zip once you have checked everything arrived. Left behind, it eats space and counts against your account limits.
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This shortcut also saves inodes. Every file counts against a limit on the number of files, not just on space. If you have never heard of that, it is worth five minutes: the limits nobody advertises.
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Uploading over a site that already exists
This is the delicate one, because you are replacing something that currently works.
| 1 |
Take a copy first. The whole site and the database. If the panel is to hand, restoring with JetBackup shows you where they are.
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Decide what happens to duplicates. FileZilla asks, and offers to apply the answer to the whole queue. Overwrite if newer suits most cases; Overwrite always is for when you really do want to throw away what is there.
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Do not delete the old folder before uploading the new one. If the upload dies halfway you are left with neither. Upload over it and tidy up afterwards.
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Watch out for hidden files. .htaccess does not show by default and is often the thing that makes the site work. The Server menu has an option to force showing hidden files: switch it on.
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After uploading: the three checks
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Is the failed transfers tab empty? If it is not, right click and requeue. A file that failed is a page that will not open.
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Are the permissions normal? 755 on folders and 644 on files is what works here. If you uploaded from a computer with different rules, check.
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If something refuses to upload, or uploads and never appears, the list of errors with their numbers is in common FTP errors.
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Would you rather we brought the site across? Migration is one request and we handle it.
Open a support ticket
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