How to use SFTP to connect to your WordPress website

SFTP (Secu­re File Trans­fer Pro­to­col) is a net­work pro­to­col used for file trans­fer. It is a more secu­re method than FTP.

With these tools you can create a SFTP connection to your WordPress website #

To use SFTP, you need a pro­gram that sup­ports the pro­to­col and can con­nect to your web ser­ver. The­se appli­ca­ti­ons are cal­led FTP cli­ents.

The­re are various free FTP cli­ents, so it is up to ever­yo­ne to choo­se the right tool. We have had good expe­ri­en­ces with the fol­lo­wing cli­ents:

• File­Zil­la (free, macOS, Win­dows or Linux)
• Win­SCP (free, Win­dows)

Note: Seve­ral deve­lo­per IDE’s (e.g. PHPStorm, Dream­wea­ver) also offer direct SFTP access, so you don’t need an FTP cli­ent.

How to configure the FTP client to connect to your WordPress website #

After­wards, the FTP cli­ent must be con­fi­gu­red. For this, you store the fol­lo­wing infor­ma­ti­on:

• Con­nec­tion type: SFTP (not FTP or cf.)
• Address/Server/URL: Can also be the domain or the IPv4 address to your hos­ter. Some pro­vi­ders offer a sepa­ra­te URL for the con­nec­tion. For Stra­to this would be e.g. ssh.strato.de.
• User­na­me
• Pass­word
• Port (SFTP uses port 22)

You can get the access infor­ma­ti­on from your hos­ting pro­vi­der. Nor­mal­ly you will get a log­in to your hos­ting con­tract, the­re you will usual­ly also find the access data for SFTP.

How to use SFTP with FileZilla #

By default File­Zil­la uses the FTP port (21). The­r­e­fo­re you must eit­her spe­ci­fy the port expli­cit­ly or alter­na­tively add the pre­fix “sftp://” to the domain.

Howe­ver, File­Zill­la will be hap­py to tell you if you have spe­ci­fied the wrong port. A mes­sa­ge like this will appear:

Error: Cannot establish FTP connection to an SFTP server. Please select proper protocol. 
Error: Critical error. Could not connect to server

That’s it. Now you should be con­nec­ted to your ser­ver and can edit the files.