How to access the site via FTP

We do not offer an FTP service by default on any of our droplets as the protocol is insecure. Instead, all droplets have an SFTP service enabled.

When you create a droplet a “root” user account with full administrative privileges is created. If you are using password based authentication, your password is emailed to you and you are required to change it the first time you log in.

Once you create a droplet (server) on our platform we have no access to it, or your password. You can reset your password for any of your droplets via the control panel.

This guide will walk you through using Filezilla to connect to your droplet’s SFTP service.

By “database file” I assume that you’re referring to a .sql format export of your database. Please correct me if I am wrong. If this is the case, you will have to use the mysqldump utility over ssh in order to export your database as a .sql file. If you have phpmyadmin installed on your droplet you can perform an export via a browser by accessing phpmyadmin.

Droplets do not support FTP by default since it’s an insecure protocol. However, the Droplets’ SSH service does support SFTP to transfer files over SSH, which we highly recommend.

Follow our How To Use SFTP to Securely Transfer Files with a Remote Server tutorial and use the following information to log in to the server:

Hostname and Port: The hostname is the IP address of the Droplet. The port is 22 by default. Username and Password: The username and password are the credentials you use to SSH into the Droplet. If you are using a root user and you choose password authentication, you need to log in to the Droplet via SSH prior to logging in via SFTP, to ensure your password is set properly. If you choose key-based authentication, you only need to provide the key to the SFTP client. To learn how to connect through SSH, see our tutorial.

If you are using FileZilla to connect using SFTP, see our How to Transfer Files to Droplets With FileZilla tutorial.