Delete files in cPanel, how do I do it? – – Wingdings Translator Online

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To talk of delete files You also have to do it about how the File Manager works in cPanel, the Trash and the file search, among others.

In this article I tell you how Delete files in cPanel once you no longer need them, or because you are taking up more space than contracted and you need to free up space in your Hosting account.

Something that apparently may seem easy to do, it is very possible that for users who are new to web projects, many of the elements that a Hosting Panel includes will be uphill, and that is why having a brief guide that explains how to do it And with what tools, they will allow you to make tasks in cPanel more comfortable and faster to perform.

What are you going to see in this article?

How to delete files from Hosting?
Where you can delete and where you shouldn’t
The trash can
Find out where the files to delete are
How to delete files from File Manager

It is important that always before carrying out tasks that involve deleting files or folders from your Hosting make a Backup; a task that takes 2 minutes to complete and that can save you a lot of headaches later if you delete something you shouldn’t have deleted due to carelessness or ignorance.

How to delete files from Hosting?

There are basically three methods to accomplish this:

From the File Manager from the Hosting Panel.
From a client of FTP (Filezilla, CyberDuck, etc.)
From your CMS through an extension or plugin (filemanager).
There would be a fourth method reserved for Administrators with access to the server: SSH.

Any of the three mentioned methods is valid for:

Upload or download files or folders.
Delete files or folders.
Rename files or folders.

Although file management from the backend or dashboard of a CMS is less recommended since it acts as a ‘filemanager’ that depends on the possible limitations imposed by the server to perform certain tasks with files and/or folders.

Where you can delete and where you shouldn’t

Here comes into play fear of messing up brown,Yes!, and it is very legitimate that you have that type of fear, especially if your thing is not to deal with folders or directories and data structures of a Hosting.

But I hope you dispel the fear once you read this, because in the end it is not that difficult, or it is less than throwing a piece of paper from your table into the trash or deleting a photo from your mobile, in the end it is data “in format digital” but ultimately “data”.

Folders in which you should take extreme measures before deleting files:

/home/ either /home2/ (depends on the server where you stay, based on cPanel).
/home//mail where the folders of email accounts managed in your Hosting account are stored.
/home//cache where Hosting cache files are stored (not from the hosted websites).
/home//ssl where the information of SSL Certificates installed in the Hosting is stored.
/home//cpmove.psql of the cPremote Backup Management backup tool.
/home//etc data storage of users and passwords of the Hosting services.
/home//logs all log files collected on the server for your Hosting account.
/home//tmp stores temporary files generated by Webalizer, Analog, Awstat, etc.
/home//tmp_user user session temporary store.
/home//var/cpanel/styled/current_style where they are stored
/home//access-logs access log store.

Folders in which you can manage files/folders without problems:

/home//public_ftp It is the native FTP folder of the Hosting generated by default when the account is created.
/home//public_html It is the “star” folder of your Hosting and where all your websites are stored.
/home//vmsafe if you use VirtueMart (folder used by the component for Joomla).
/home//moodledata if you use Moodle (folder used by Moodle).
/home//www is a symbolic link to /public_html which is the physical folder. There are no two folders (www and public_html) but only /public_html where www is the symbolic link.

Obviously the star folder and the one you should focus your efforts on is /public_htmlwhere your websites are stored, whether you have one or fifteen, keeping in mind that only the files and folders of the websites are stored and not the databases.

Most servers separate database management, either within the same server, but in folders outside of /home (or /home2) where the user who manages Hosting accounts does not have access, or on a database server data specific and physically separated from the client’s Hosting account server (OVH case).

So before the question what can i delete to free up space?you already have a place to start digging, it’s called /public_html and as I already told you, it is where you have your websites, which, as a general rule, tend to be the ones that take up most of the Hosting space, unless you use email a lot and have one or more email accounts with hundreds of emails and attached in spades.

The trash can

It plays an important role in the process of freeing up Hosting space, especially if you work with the ‘skin’ for cPanel paper_lantern since from the File Manager you will have access to it to be able to empty it.

Review in this article how to manage the Trash of your Hosting with cPanel and the skin “paper_lanter:”

Find out where the files to delete are

In order to delete files or folders (or both) in your Hosting, you must first know where to find them.

A clue as to which files take up a lot of space in your Hosting can be given by Stephan, a script that clients enjoy from their Client Area and that helps them solve problems detected in Hosting accounts.

Well, this script, one of the information that it usually provides, is the detection of files that take up a lot of space in the Hosting, such as backup copies, an error file error_log with excessive growth, large multimedia files, etc.

We have found the following files that are larger than 10 MB, if you have space problems you may want to download them to your computer and remove them from the server:

83 MB in the file /home/usuario/.trash/site-www.sitio-web.com-20160416-122257.zip dated Apr 16 17:26
83 MB in the file /home/usuario/public_html/site-www.sitio-web.com-20160416-122257.zip dated May 10 01:06
83 MB in the file /home/user/public_html/administrator/components/com_akeeba/backup/site-www.sitio-web.com-20160423-151143.zip dated Apr 23 20:16
23 MB in the file /home/user/public_html/sitio-web.com/quick_start_vp_merchant-2.1.zip dated Apr 26 19:22

This notice from Stephan indicates not only the size of several of the detected files greater than 10MB that you should download and delete from the Hosting to free up space, but it also indicates what type of files it is, in this case there are 3 backup copies and a ‘quickstart’ file.

You also get information about the folder where they are located, which makes it much easier for you to find those files later from the File Manager from your cPanel.

In this case the backup path would be /home/username/.trash/, that is, a “hidden” folder outside of /public_html, that is, one level below it. It also indicates that the “quickstart” packaged .zip file is located in the folder /public_html/website.com of the Hosting.

It does not make sense to keep backup copies in the Hosting, mainly because if you delete files or folders by mistake (it usually happens by FTP or if you delete an FTP account associated with /public_html “without looking”) or web installation files (quickstart) that you have already used, you will also be deleting those backup copies, “losing” them in this process.

How to delete files from File Manager

Now you know a way to locate files that take up a lot of space “if you are a client”, otherwise you will have to resort to Disc Viewer (Disk Usage), in your cPanel, Files, to detect folders that have a large size as it will be a sign that there are large files inside or many files with smaller sizes that take up a lot of space.

If you want to know how the Disk Viewer works, John Marreros He tells you in this video:

The next thing is to go to the folder where you have files that you want to delete to select them and proceed with their elimination (or prior download to your computer).

In this example, backup files generated with the XCloner plugin have been selected, in a WordPress installation, which have first been downloaded to the computer and are now selected to be removed from the Hosting.

If your website uses extensions or plugins to manage backups, it is better to delete the backups from the extension (Akeeba Backup for example) or from the plugin (XCloner for example) instead of doing it from the File Manager from your Hosting Panel.

You can select several files or folders at the same time, within the same screen of the File Manager Keeping the Control key pressed and with the mouse you select them to later eliminate them.

If you work with Image Galleries, either in WordPress or Joomla, it is not recommended that you bulk delete images you don’t need from the File ManagerIn these cases, it is recommended that you do it from the CMS extension or plugin itself and always after a backup copy.

Check in this article how to make a copy of the Media Library in WordPress:

As you have been able to verify, the management of files in your Hosting Panel (cPanel) is a simple task, which only requires caution, make backup copies before deleting files or folders, and then make use of the File Manager to eliminate those unnecessary files in your Hosting.

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