Tag: hosting

Uploading Files to Hosting (FTP, FTPS, SFTP)

Note: this guide applies to our customers on standard hosting. If you have a dedicated server or complex setup then this may not apply and you will have received specific instructions. If in doubt please just contact support.

You can upload content onto your web hosting account using the FTP or FTPS protocols. FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol and is the most commonly used way to upload files on the Internet. By default unlike more modern technologies, FTP does not encrypt anything, so in theory someone “listening in” could intercept your files or passwords although please note this is unlikely. FTPS is FTP with added security (like a website with HTTPS) and the communication between your computer and our server is encrypted.

Verrotech support FTPS on all our standard hosting platforms, and you may well find your file transfer client (WinSCP or FileZilla etc) supports this option.

To FTP into your content you connect (the server name) to your web address so for example.com connect to www.example.com (note old documentation may refer to ftp.verrotech.com but you should now always use your own domain address). If you are using FTPS you may see some warnings about the Certificate being for a different host or unknown but these are safe to accept/say yes to (your communications will be secured).

Once you are connected for most accounts you will see a ‘web’ folder. This is the folder that web content (things you want to be able to be downloaded) go into. Things you want to store but do not want to be downloadable (password files, configuration, etc) you can put outside of the web folder. If we have configured different services for you (i.e. shop.example.com) you’ll see more folders there.

If you’re unsure about where things or go need some guidance specific to your setup then please just get in touch.

SFTP

SFTP stands for Secure Shell File Transfer Protocol and is different from FTPS (of course!). SFTP is based around the SSH protocol and is entirely encrypted from start to finish.

Verrotech can offer SFTP access to accounts but we can only offer either FTP/FTPS or SFTP access, and by default it’s FTP/FTPS (if you have SFTP enabled you will no longer be able to use FTP/FTPS).

If you do want to switch over to SFTP just contact support.

 

Mailing from Hosting Servers

A lot of the applications customers install (such as wordpress, drupal, phpBB, and so on) send emails as part of their operation – emails to the customer (“a new user has registered”) and also emails to the users who register (“confirm your account”, “a new item has been posted”). A potential issue with these are that services can easily categorise this sort of mail as spam – very commonly the sender details aren’t setup correctly (mail comes from “wordpress@localhost” or similar) or they’re very sparse or dubious in nature.

Likewise such services can be used to spam indirectly – if I register on a site using your email address you’re going to get a unwanted (spam) message about registering on the site.

In the past that just meant the email would more likely be in your spam folder but more commonly now email providers take steps to stop this at the network level, and there are even coordinated efforts to block some servers from sendmail mail (blacklists). Obviously Verrotech work hard to keep our systems off such blacklists and as such don’t support or allow the bulk/common sending of unauthenticated email from our hosting servers (sending of mail is what our mail servers are for!). We don’t say no totally because it’s always possible you may want to send a couple of legitimate messages.

However – customers using applications that send mail on a regular basis should really configure these to send mail through an SMTP relay host, be that Verrotech’s mail servers if you have mail support or, more likely, a third party such as gMail. There are plenty of guides available online on how to do so.

Using an SMTP relay will not only mean your mails get through and don’t fall foul of our protections, but also they are more likely to appear in your users inboxes and not get categorised as spam.

Any problems with this feel free to contact support.