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The File Manager lets you work with your website’s files straight from your browser. You can upload files, create folders, edit code, unzip archives and change permissions without installing anything.

Difficulty

Beginner

Time

5 minutes

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Open the File Manager

1

Open your website

Go to Websites and click your website’s name.
2

Click Files

Click the Files tab in the top menu.
File Manager showing a folder tree on the left and the home folder with folders such as public_html and files such as .bashrc and redis.conf as cards

The File Manager

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What you’re looking at

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Where your website files go

Your home folder holds everything for the website. The folder that visitors see is public_html (it has a small globe icon). Files you put in public_html appear at https://yourdomain.com/, so public_html/about.html opens at https://yourdomain.com/about.html.
Leave hidden files and folders such as .ssh, .bashrc and .my.cnf alone unless you know what they do. Deleting them can break SSH access or command-line tools.
A subdomain gets its own folder in your home folder, for example blog.example.com, next to public_html rather than inside it.

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Create a file or folder

1

Open the folder

Click the folder where the new item should go, for example public_html.
2

Click New

Choose File or Folder.
3

Enter a name

In the Create new file box, type a name such as index.html, then click Create. You’ll see New file added.

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Upload files

1

Open the destination folder

Usually public_html.
2

Click Upload

Choose File to pick one or more files, or Folder to upload a whole folder with its contents.
3

Wait for the upload to finish

The new items appear in the folder when they’re done.
Uploading a whole website? Zip it on your computer, upload the single .zip file, then use Uncompress (below). It’s much faster than uploading thousands of small files. For very large sites, FTP or SFTP works well too.

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File and folder actions

Right-click any file or folder, or click its ⋮ menu, to see what you can do with it.
Right-click menu with Edit, Download, Get info, Cut, Copy, Rename, Compress, Permissions and Delete

The actions menu

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Edit a file

1

Open the editor

Double-click a text file, or right-click it and choose Edit. The editor opens with line numbers and code highlighting.
2

Make your changes

Type directly in the editor.
3

Save

Click Save at the top right. You’ll see File saved. Click Close to go back to the folder.
Full-width code editor with the file name at the top and Close and Save buttons on the right

The built-in editor

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Change permissions

1

Open Permissions

Right-click the file or folder and choose Permissions.
2

Pick the levels

Set Owner, Group and World. The number updates as you choose, for example 644.
3

Apply to everything inside (folders only)

Tick Apply recursively to change everything inside the folder too.
4

Save

Click Save.
Never set 777. It lets anything on the server change the file and is a common way websites get hacked.

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Troubleshooting

Check the files are inside public_html and not in your home folder. Also clear your browser cache, and if you use WordPress with LiteSpeed Cache, purge the cache. See Optimise website performance.
The file or folder permissions are too strict, or there’s no index file. Set files to 644 and folders to 755, and make sure public_html contains index.html or index.php.
Only text files can be edited. Images, archives and other binary files can be downloaded, renamed or deleted instead.
Deleting is permanent. Restore it from an automatic backup: see Create and restore backups.

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Need Extra Help?

If you encounter any issues, our support team is ready to assist:

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Last Updated: October 2026