N.C. Aditya’s Blog

Are you able to see the .htaccess file on your server using your FTP client? If the answer is a NO, it means that your web hosting company has disabled viewing system files by default. You will have to configure your FTP client to show them by using server side filtering.

Files like .htaccess and .htpasswd are system files and many web hosting companies disable viewing them. Even if you create a new .htaccess file and upload it, you still won’t be able to see it. However, not all web hosts disable them and if your web host doesn’t disable them you will have now problem in viewing the files or modifying them.

I will describe how to enable server side filtering in the two FTP clients that I use: CuteFTP and FileZilla. I have added screenshots to make the procedure more clear.

CuteFTP:

Open CuteFTP and click on the Site Manager Tab.

Right click on the name of the FTP account and navigate to "Properties". (You can also select the FTP account and press ALT+ENTER) You will see a dialog box as shown below:

Now click on the "Actions" tab. You will see something similar to the screenshot below:

Click on the Filter button (Highlighted above) and you will see a new box appear.

Enable "Server side filtering" and in the box below enter "-al" with the quotes.

Click "OK" and then connect to see if you can see the hidden files.

FileZilla:

In FileZilla it is much easier.

First, connect to your server by clicking on the icon in the Site Manager.

Once connected, click on the "Server" tab and you will see the following options:

 

Click on "Force showing hidden files" and you will be able to see the all the hidden files.

Please leave a comment and let me know your opinion about this post.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 20th, 2008 at 6:06 am and is filed under Webhosting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.