WinSCP

Download WinSCP

WinSCP is a Windows FTP client. This is what you use when you have a lot of files to transfer to you web server or need to copy backup of your site to your home computer. WinSCP is my favorite FTP client for Windows. It is free, open sourced software. However, you may prefer FileZilla, another free open source FTP client.

• Host name: This is your domain name as in “example.com”. You could also use the IP address of your server here.
• Port number: The default port number for FTP is 21, while SFTP is 22.
• User name & Password: Although this seems simple, you must know whether your FTP or SFTP user name and password is the same as the user name and password for your hosting account. It may not be the same. If your site is hosted at BlueHost.com your username is generally your domain name, but check your setup to be sure. It may have been truncated if it is long. BlueHost also uses the domain name without the “dot” between the name the the “com”, “org” or whatever.
• Private Key: SSH and other encrypted protocols work on a public key/private key combination. For simple access, you can usually leave this blank. The first time you logon to you site you will be warned about the key values and asked whether you trust the host and want to save the key. Presuming you know that you have entered the correct domain name for your site, you can accept the key. You will not be asked again unless the key changes.
• File Protocol: SFTP for secure access on port 22 or FTP for standard access on port 21. SCP is a third protocol listed but you won't be using that for now.
• Save … button: You can save this information so you won't have to re-enter it each time you want to logon to your site with FTP or SFTP. You can even save the password. There is a security risk if you save the password - you have to assess whether you think it is safe to do so.
• Login button: Connects you to your site.

One of the reasons I prefer WinSCP over FileZilla is that using a two panel Windows Explorer interface is optional on WinSCP. It is the only interface available on FileZilla. You may love the Explorer interface. My wife does. But I do not like it. You can change the interface by going to the Preferences screen and clicking on the radio button of your preferred style of window.

When you browse your remote directory it is possible to make changes to files using an appropriate editor that is on your computer. You will be editing a local copy of the file which is transferred back to the server when you save it. There is a default built-in text editor but as you can see from this image, I've set my WinSCP to use Notepad++ for editing.

The mask allows you to specify different editors for different file types. You could even specify a graphics editor for images.

The following shows what the remote directory listing looks like (when not using the Commander interface).

I have the remote directory displayed as a tree structure on the left and the directory and files under the chosen tree item are on the right. The cursor arrow on the button bar is pointing to the button that will turn off (or on) the tree display.

To upload or download files or directories, drag and drop between you local computer files and the directory listing window (on right in image). The progress of file transfers is shown in the bottom window.