Server File Management Tools

Managing remote-server files is a pain, especially when you have to deal with many files AND servers. While FileZilla is amongst the most popular ftp-clients, I tend to use other much better alternatives that I hope you’d find useful.

This is more of a review blog-post based on my experience with remote-server management tools.

Selection criteria

Before I stick to a specific software, it must match the following criteria:

• safe for prolonged and daily-use
• portable or cross-platform solution
• intuitive
• secure
• free!

Top picks

WinSCP (Windows only)

http://winscp.net

WinSCP is a very handy remote-client tool that has rich Windows GUI integration (drag-and-drop, keyboard short-cuts, native icon & themes).

What I especially like about it:

• portable -- run it without installing
• built-in console terminal
• advanced commands via right-click (zip, unzip, tar, untar)
• explorer-like controls

If you’re steering away from FileZilla, WinSCP is probably the best alternative for you.

Beyond Compare (free/commercial, desktop-based)

http://scootersoftware.com

As the name states, “Beyond Compare” allows you to compare remote files to local, remote, or specific folders in your current remote-server. And it does more (beyond if you will) than that.

Cool things you can do with BC:

• run it from your usb (portable, but can be installed too)
• cross-platform
• supports both FTP and SFTP
• has logs and history of files, folders and sites opened
• built-in text editor
• can compare a variety of files, folders, even archives:
  • synchronize from left-to-right (copy, move, merge)
  • version detection (supports version-control repositories as well)
  • filter files, display in a tree structure
  • compare music, pictures, and more (plugins available on their website)

Beyond Compare v3.0 start screen

Line-by-line text-editor comparison

Comparison modes

I find BC3 much faster in accessing remote files. Because of that, I use it as my base editor when coding.

eXtplorer (open source, web-hosted)

http://extplorer.sourceforge.net

eXtplorer is a web-hosted, php-based file manager built using the extJS javascript framework.
Simply grab (or wget) the zip file to your web server, extract, and you’re ready to go.

Yummy eXtplorer features:

• Customize user accounts
  • assign roles
  • assign folders to access
• Rich set of server tools
  • fast Upload / Download widgets
  • zip, unzip, tar, untar
  • rich-text editor
  • drag-and-drop
  • file search and filter
  • right-click for advanced menu
• Multi-lingual
• Very light (less than 5mb when extracted)
• Access it from anywhere. You only need a web-browser to manage your remote files.

Ajaxplorer (open source, web-hosted)

http://ajaxplorer.info

Yet another javascript-powered file manager, Ajaxplorer promises better user-experience compared to its rivals.

Cool Ajaxplorer features:

• assign Public Links to files or folders (you can even assign passwords & generate links)
• view and play media files (pre-packed media plugin)
• fast thumbnail previews
• quicker text editor
• enforces a recycle bin for deleted files
• user activities are logged automatically

Conclusion

There you have it! No more reason to hate remote file-management. With these tools, rest assured you’ll have more fun with your web-application projects.