cPanel Tutorials

File Manager Tutorial

This tutorial covers the following topics:

Creating a New Folder
Creating a New File
Editing a File
File Permissions

The File Manager allows you to manage your site through HTTP rather than an FTP tool or other third-party application. You can upload, create or delete files, organize files in folders and change file permission. File Manager gives you all the basic functionality necessary to manage your site.

To access the File Manager click on the corresponding icon in the Files section of your cPanel.

Then you will be able to pick the directory for which to open File Manager. You can also enable the "Show Hidden Files (dotfiles)" option in order to be able to see files that start with a dot (.), for example - .htaccess. by clicking on setting option present at extreme right side of the page.

When the actual tool opens up, you can perform various operations as follows:

● Creating a New Folder

Folders are a very useful way of adding an organization and a structure to your account. They make the maintenance of the site much easier. You can easily list the files in every folder. To create a folder click on the option “Folder” as shown below

A pop-up will appear in which you can give the new folder a name and its desired location. Once you input that information, click the Create New Folder button.

The new folder will appear in the desired location.

● Creating a New File

To create a new file, press the New File button.

A pop-up will appear in which you can give the new file a name and its desired location. Once you input that information, click the Create New File button.

The new file will appear in the selected location.

● Editing a File

Editing an existing file through the File Manager allows you to make immediate changes to your web site without having to upload a new version of the file. This is useful for small changes but would be inefficient for large alterations. To edit a file from your hosting account, left click the file name and then the Edit button since Edit button is disabled, it enables only when you select a particular file its activated.

A pop-up will appear asking you to specify the file encoding. The File Manager tool automatically detects the encoding of the file, so you could click the Disable Encoding Check button if you want to disable the pop-up from showing every time.

A new page will open in which you can edit the file. At the top of the page you can see the full path to the file, the file encoding and Close and Save buttons.

You can also perform the various other functions on Files or Folders such as “copy” “move” “Rename” ”Upload” “Download”.

● File permissions can also be corrected using the same window

All files on UNIX (including Linux and other UNIX variants) machines have access permissions. In this way the operating system knows how to deal with requests to access the files. There are three types of access:
• Read - Denoted as r, files with read access can be displayed to the user.
• Write - Denoted as w, files with write access can be modified by the user.
• Execute - Denoted as x, files with execute access can be executed as programs by the user.

Access types are set for three types of user group:
• User - The owner of the file.
• Group - Other files which are in the same folder or group.
• World - Everyone else.

The web server needs to be able to read your web pages in order to be able to display them in a browser. The following permissions need to be set in order for your web site to function properly.

All HTML files and images need to be readable by others. The value for this is 644 (readable by User, Group and World, and writable by User). It is set automatically when you upload files.

All folders need to be executable by others. The value for this is 755 (readable by User, Group and World, writable by User, executable by User, Group and World). It is set automatically when you create a folder.

All CGI files (all files in the cgi-bin folder) need to be executable by others. The value for this is 755 (readable by User, Group, and World, writable by User, executable by User, Group, and World). It is not set automatically when you upload files. You need to change the file permissions manually.