All of our Shared Hosting plans come with a built in File Manager utility where it is possible to edit basic file permissions. See the “Changing File Permissions in File Manager” section below for more details.
For our Custom Pro (Unix) accounts, we provide an SSH access utility which allows for more control over file permissions. See the Setting Permissions through SSH section below for more details.
Changing File Permissions in File manager
The file permission options vary slightly for our Unix and Windows Shared Hosting plans. Permissions can be changed by navigating to a specific file and choosing the desired permission from the “Current Permissions:” dropdown menu and then clicking the “Modify” button.
Permissions (Unix): the File Manager lets you set the permissions for folders and files. The default folder permissions are sufficient if you are uploading standard web material but you may need to set permissions for a file or folder to Wide Open for certain web applications to function, or to Restricted for material which only your user account should have access to. Please be careful when opening up permissions — if you set them to be too open, it can give hackers an avenue for attack.
Permissions (Windows): the File Manager lets you set the permissions for folders and files. You can set permissions individually for the owner account, the Launch IIS Process Account, and the IIS Guest Account. You can set permissions to No Access, Read Only, Read/Write, and Full Control. The default folder permissions are sufficient if you are uploading standard web material but you may need to set permissions for a file or folder for either of the IIS accounts to Read/Write or Full Control. Additionally, you may choose to restrict read access to certain file and folders to your own user account by changing the permission to No Access for both the IIS accounts. Please be careful when opening up permissions — if you set them to be too open, it can give hackers an avenue for attack.
Changing Permissions through SSH
Connecting directly to your webserver via SSH is only available for our Custom Pro (Unix) Shared Hosting accounts. To access this feature go to MyCP -> Connect via SSH2. From there you can enter in your password (The password is your account’s password) and log in to your root directory via a Java enabled terminal window.
Once you are logged in you can set directory and file permissions using standard Unix commands. It is recommended that you research the proper use of Unix permission commands to ensure that your directories and files are secure. Please be careful when opening up permissions — if you set them to be too open, it can give hackers an avenue for attack.
