New CMS website - no FTP access offered

valve90210 · 15 May 2013 at 12:24

Hi All

At my work they are currently having a new website put together which will be based around CMS so people here can upload pictures, files etc etc and edit news items and pages etc.

However one of the things we have on the site are books created with theflippingbook, (I know it's rather dated and pointless but people here love it).

When each of these books is created you are given an index.html file and a folder within which there are various subfolders which contain the page elements, the scripting etc etc.

At present these are just added to a document library with a simple copy and paste of the html file and the whole folder.

However with the CMS there is no way to get it to upload a whole folder with subfolders etc. The person who deals with this asked the company providing the site for FTP access so these things (and others of various types) can be uploaded enmass but was told by the company that they don't offer any FTP access for security reasons...

Surely this is a strange setup... they have put the site together and are hosting it but won't allow us the customer FTP access to our own site?

GravyMonster · 15 May 2013 at 12:27

Not that strange, although it tends to be the more 'cheap' development companies which try to pull this kind of stuff. I'd imagine they're hosting all their clients sites on one server and don't know how/have a secure FTP server set up.

Although it sounds like the website wasn't fully spec'd out beforehand.

rsatd · 15 May 2013 at 12:58

They are likely to mention what you get in small print when you buy it. I would change host

K@rl · 15 May 2013 at 13:48

I do this for the sites I build for people.

Just a small error by the person with FTP access could bring down the whole site or maybe even delete all the images stored if its locked to the directory. I'd rather not have the hassle of fixing it and I doubt my customers would want to pay for me to correct their mistakes.

Why not just ask for a way to mass upload via the CMS. Many of the plugins I use offer the ability to upload zip files etc...

Deleted member 77746 · 15 May 2013 at 14:00

Change over to TSOHOST or something like that... fantastic hosting service.

fez · 15 May 2013 at 14:26

You can create FTP accounts with limited access so I don't see why this would be an issue. If you are willing to pay to have it setup I can't see why there would be a problem.

valve90210 · 15 May 2013 at 14:51

K@rl said:
Just a small error by the person with FTP access could bring down the whole site or maybe even delete all the images stored if its locked to the directory. I'd rather not have the hassle of fixing it and I doubt my customers would want to pay for me to correct their mistakes.

I could see the logic behind that when building a site for a small business where there aren't many IT savvy people etc but this is a big company and the people needing the FTP access are the IT department who run the intranet etc

Part of the issue is that the website is commissioned by the marketing side of the business and will be maintained by them also but it is alsorequired by the IT side and I guess the communication between the two is not ideal at times so this may have been overlooked...

K@rl said:
Why not just ask for a way to mass upload via the CMS. Many of the plugins I use offer the ability to upload zip files etc...

I shall suggest this though it does still add unnecessary complications to uploading compared to being able to FTP in...

inogen · 15 May 2013 at 14:58

I don't tend to let clients have FTP access, but I do currently allow two of them to FTP to upload directories with no access to the rest of their files. Basically stops them from busting their own websites then asking me why they don't work.

I know all my clients personally though. If clients were managed by account managers I wouldn't allow any FTP. It would be all too easy for someone to upload malicious code and execute it on the server. At least CMS uploading gives a level of protection from this. Though I'm not sure I'd allow zipped files either.

I wouldn't want my site hosted on a webserver where unknowns were given FTP access. You might as well host a site on shared hosting. So, in my opinion, it's a problem with going to a larger, less personal development company. And I'd be worried if a larger company did allow FTP access.