#networking #webdev #programming

After you've created your first website or something else you need to publish, how do you upload it to the server? And how do you edit the files on the server? This has long been a huge issue.

But in this tutorial, I will show you how you can easily upload your files (without using insecure and messy protocols like ftp) and also how you can edit those files live on the server using the Sociopath Scp Client together with vsCode.

Scp and ssh

Scp is a file transfer protocol, primarily used by Linux technicians for transfering individual files. It's a command-line tool which is nifty, because it uses the ssh protocol, which is enabled on practically all servers world-wide.

The problem is when you need to transfer more than one file, which is possible but it gets kind of messy. Besides, the scp command-line tool is very difficult to use for beginners. Also, there is no possible way to edit your files on the server.

Sociopath

Sociopath is a new graphical scp client for Windows and OSX. In fact, it's the only graphical scp client in the world for Mac. It's got a lightning-fast interface and you can use it to edit individual files but also to open up a whole folder structure in vsCode (or your favorite text editor) and for example edit a website live on the server. This has never been possible before Sociopath.

Instructions

1. First you need to download Sociopath by googling "Sociopath scp client" and going to the download page. Install it and connect to the server using the connect button. The interface is very self-explanatory.
2. Secondly you need to download vsCode, Brackets or another modern code editor.
3. Navigate to your website and right click the folder. Select "Open in editor".
4. Sociopath will download all necessary code files (but not images or anything else) to a temporary directory and then open the dir in vsCode. Each time you save a file or create a folder it will automatically synchronize by uploading in the background. It's like you're editing the website Live on the server!

Best regards,

dr Jonas Birch