Using the File Manager

The File Manager is a full file browser built into the customer panel. It lets you upload files, edit text in place, create and rename folders, set permissions, and zip or unzip archives — all without an SSH session or FTP client. It's available on every tier (Community, Pro, and Developer); there's no upgrade gate.

Where it lives, and what it can touch

Open the customer panel and click File Manager in the sidebar. It opens at the root of your account's storage: /srv/sites/<your-username>/.

Everything the File Manager shows lives inside that directory. Your first site is served out of /srv/sites/<user>/public_html/; each additional site gets its own subfolder, /srv/sites/<user>/<sitename>/public_html/. This is a hard boundary — the File Manager refuses any path that would climb above your own directory, so you can only ever see and change files that belong to your account. That's the important safety fact: you cannot reach another customer's files, or anything system-owned, from here.

Navigating and sorting

Double-click a folder to open it. The breadcrumb bar at the top tracks where you are — click any segment to jump back, or the home icon to return to the root. The up-arrow button goes to the parent folder, and refresh re-reads the current folder. A list / grid toggle switches between the detailed table and a compact icon view.

In list view the Name, Size, and Modified column headers are clickable — click one to sort by it, click again to reverse the direction. Folders always sort ahead of files regardless of the column. Sorting by Modified uses the real timestamp, so it orders correctly rather than sorting the displayed date as text.

Uploading files

Click Upload in the top-right, pick one or more files, and they're written into the folder you're currently viewing. You can select multiple files at once; the panel reports how many landed. To upload into a specific folder, open that folder first, then upload.

Use New Folder and New File next to Upload to create an empty directory or a blank file in the current folder. A newly created file opens empty and ready to edit.

Editing files in the browser

Double-click any text file to open it in the built-in editor. Make your changes and click Save — the editor stays open so you can keep working, and shows an Unsaved marker whenever the content differs from what's on disk. Pressing Tab inserts spaces rather than moving focus, and a wrap / no-wrap toggle controls long-line behaviour. Closing with unsaved changes prompts before discarding them.

The editor has two deliberate guards, because it loads the whole file into a browser text box:

• Size limit — 2 MB. Files larger than 2 MB (2048 KB) won't open in the editor; the panel tells you the file's size and suggests downloading it instead. This comfortably covers config files, wp-config.php, .htaccess, and source code.
• Binary protection. If a file looks binary (a NUL byte anywhere in the first 8 KB — images, archives, compiled code), the editor refuses to open it, because a text box would silently corrupt it on save. Download it instead.

Renaming, moving, and permissions

Each row has a ⋮ menu with per-item actions:

• Rename — change a file or folder's name in place.
• Move… — type a destination folder and the item is moved there. Moves won't silently overwrite an existing file of the same name — the panel reports a conflict instead.
• Permissions… — a checkbox grid for owner / group / public read, write, and execute bits. The equivalent octal (e.g. 644, 755) updates live as you tick boxes; click Apply to set it.
• Download — pull a single file down to your computer.
• Delete — remove one item, with a confirmation prompt.

Multi-select and batch delete

Each row (and each grid tile) has a checkbox. Tick several and a selection bar appears showing how many are selected, with two actions:

• Delete selected — removes everything ticked in one confirmed operation. This can't be undone, so read the prompt. If some items fail, the panel reports how many succeeded and how many didn't.
• Compress selected — see below.

Compressing and extracting archives

Select one or more items and click Compress selected. Give the archive a name and choose a format — .zip, .tar.gz, or .tar — and the archive is created in the current folder. All selected items must live in the same folder.

To unpack an archive, open its ⋮ menu and choose Extract here. It unpacks into the current folder; files with the same name are overwritten, so you'll get a warning first. Supported archive types are .zip, .tar, .tar.gz, and .tgz (plus single-file .gz). Archives that try to write outside the target folder are rejected, so a malicious archive can't escape your directory.

Troubleshooting

"This file is too large to edit" / "can't be edited as text"

You've hit one of the editor guards — the file is over 2 MB, or it's binary. Neither can be safely edited in a browser text box. Use the Download action to pull the file down and edit it locally, or work over SSH for very large files.

"Move failed" or "conflict"

A file with the same name already exists at the destination. The File Manager won't overwrite it silently — rename the existing file or the one you're moving, then try again.

Uploaded a site but it looks broken

Almost always ownership. If you uploaded or extracted a tarball from another host, the files may carry the wrong owner. See Restore a backup for the exact chown to run.

Next steps

• Migrate a WordPress site — uploading and unpacking a site export using the File Manager.
• Restore a backup — recovering files from a snapshot or a manual tarball, and fixing ownership afterwards.