8/26/2014 – Utilizing the cPanel File Manager

Posted by Jamison on 26 08 2014.

There are various web hosting providers that are available in the market. While it may be tricky to choose which one will suit your needs right, you should always consider which one will give you the best value for your money. Apart from reading reviews and getting feedback, it is important that you know the features that you can use for your website or blog. Not every feature will be useful to you, but you should at least be comfortable with the applications and services if offers.

Touted to be the market leader among other hosting providers, cPanel is a top choice among linux-based hosting businesses because it allows their customers to navigate through and easily access and manage their websites even without the imperative of being technology savvy. cPanel debunks the notion that you have to be a savvy to be able to manage your website. It allows you to do a lot of things—you can manage your database, check your site statistics, or access your email.

One of the most useful features of cPanel is the file manager. You can use this to add, view, delete, or modify website files from your account. As promised, cPanel is very convenient to use as you can easily access your website files by logging into your cPanel account, then select “File Manager” in the “Files” sub header. You will see that a dialogue box will prompt, asking where you want to log into. If you want to go directly to your public html folder which basically keeps your account files, you can select “Web Root” and click “Go.” If you need to change anything with your .htaccess file, you should check the “show hidden files” dialogue box. After this step, you are already in your File Manager. You can begin to edit, delete, or remove your files.

If you want to see the list of options on what you can do with a specific file, you simply right click on any file. These are the commonly used options in File Manager:

• HTML Edit. You can use this if you want to change the appearance of your web page.
• Code Edit. You can use this if you need to modify a code in any of your files.
• Edit. You can use this to modify the code, but without the stylized look of the other option, which is the Code Edit.
• Rename. You can use this to modify any of your filenames.
• Delete. You can use this to remove any of your files that you no longer need.

You should note that whenever you rename or delete your files, you cannot undo them, so you have to make sure that either you do not need the file in your account or you really intend to change a file name.

After you have finished changing and applying all the modifications that you intend to do in your account, you can now click on “Save Changes”. If there are significant changes in your webpage, it is recommended that you save a copy of the original code that you have used so you can use it as reference in case the modified code fails to work.