Securely Connecting to your Website using FTP

The most common FTP clients allow you to connect to your website securely. Each FTP client works differently, but typically all the settings are the same. Secure FTP, also referred to as SFTP can mean multiple things. SFTP requires SSH access and is not available to our shared hosting customers due to security reasons. Customers on Edge, VPS, or Dedicated servers can set it up however. 

If you are looking for a means of securing the connection, you can simply run it through TLS or SSL. This can easily be done in the shared hosting environment by setting the FTP client to use passive TLS. If you receive a certificate warning during the set up process, in most cases this can be resolved by setting your host name to the secure hostname of the server (secureXXX.inmotionhosting.com). If you are using FileZilla it will always prompt you to accept the certificate.

Connecting Securely using FileZilla

First, open FileZilla and click on Site Manager. You will see the screen below:

For each of the following settings, enter the information:

• Host Name: secure###.inmotionhosting.com
• Port Number: (leave blank)
• Username: your cPanel username
• Protocol: Require explicitt FTP over TLS

The ### in the host name field is the server number that your account is on. You can always find your server name by logging into your cPanel. Once you hit Connect for the first time the message below will appear and then click OK:

Once accepting the certificate, you'll now be connecting accross FTP using the security certificate.