Upload your website

Your website's files live in one folder per domain: /sites/<domain>/public. Whatever you put there is what visitors see. You upload with any SFTP app, such as FileZilla, WinSCP or Cyberduck.

Before you start#

• Add the website. Its folder is created during setup.
• Connect with SFTP: create your SFTP password under Files (SFTP) and set up your SFTP app. You need the host sftp.finitehost.com, port 2222 and your user name (your subscription ID, for example t3d2ca2b860).
• Have your website files ready on your computer.

Upload the files#

1. Connect. Open your SFTP app and connect. You start in the /sites folder, which holds one folder per website.
2. Open the public folder. Go into acme.in, then public. The full path is /sites/acme.in/public.
3. Upload. Drag your site's files from your computer into public. Upload the contents of your site folder, so that index.html or index.php sits directly inside public, not inside another sub-folder.
4. Open the site. Visit https://acme.in (or http://acme.in if HTTPS is not on yet). Changes are live as soon as the upload finishes.

/sites/acme.in/public/
  index.php          <- the home page (or index.html)
  about.html
  css/style.css
  images/logo.png

Static sites and PHP sites#

• Static sites (HTML, CSS, JavaScript, images): the home page is index.html.
• PHP sites: the home page is index.php. If both exist, index.php wins.
• Pretty URLs (such as /products/blue-shirt): when no file or folder matches the address, the request is passed to /index.php. WordPress, Laravel's public folder and most PHP frameworks work this way without any extra setup.

Things that work differently from cPanel hosts#

• .htaccess files are ignored. FiniteHost uses the nginx web server, not Apache. Redirects and rewrite rules in .htaccess have no effect. Pretty URLs still work (see above). If you need a redirect, do it in PHP, for example header('Location: https://www.acme.in/new-page', true, 301);.
• Hidden files are not served. Any file or folder whose name starts with a dot (such as .env, .git, .htaccess) cannot be opened from the web. Only /.well-known/ is allowed. This protects secrets you may have uploaded by accident.
• Uploads through your site (forms, WordPress media) can be up to 64 MB per request: PHP's upload_max_filesize and post_max_size and the web server all allow 64 MB. See PHP settings. Larger files are best uploaded over SFTP.

Troubleshooting#

• 403 Forbidden on the home page: there is no index.html or index.php directly inside public. You may have uploaded a folder inside public; move its contents up one level.
• 404 Not Found: the file name or path does not match. Names are case-sensitive: Logo.png and logo.png are different files.
• I see an old version: your browser or the CDN may have the old copy. Reload with Ctrl+F5, or rename the changed file. See CDN and caching.
• More fixes: Site shows 404 or 403.

What's next#

• Install WordPress
• Folder layout
• PHP settings