Upload your website with File Manager (no FTP needed)

May 5, 2026 · 2 min read · Markdown

This guide walks you through uploading a website to your DrivenHost account using nothing but cPanel's built-in File Manager. It works from any browser, so there is no FTP client to install or configure. You will need your cPanel login and a copy of your website files on your computer.

Zip your site first

Uploading one zip file is far faster and more reliable than uploading hundreds of individual files through a browser.

1. On your computer, open the folder that contains your website files. You want the folder where your index.html (or index.php) lives, not a folder wrapped around it.
2. Select all the files and folders inside, then compress them into a single .zip file. On Windows, right-click and choose Send to, then Compressed (zipped) folder. On a Mac, right-click and choose Compress.
3. Note where the zip file was saved.

The common mistake here is zipping the parent folder instead of its contents. If you do that, your site ends up in a subfolder on the server and visitors see a directory listing instead of your homepage.

Upload the zip in File Manager

1. Log in to cPanel and open File Manager, under the Files section.
2. In the folder tree on the left, click public_html. This is your site's document root: anything in this folder is what visitors see when they load your domain.
3. Click Upload in the toolbar.
4. Drag your zip file onto the upload page, or click Select File and browse to it. Wait for the progress bar to reach 100 percent.
5. Click the link to go back to File Manager.

Extract the files

1. In public_html, click your zip file once to select it.
2. Click Extract in the toolbar, confirm the destination is /public_html, and click Extract Files.
3. Close the results window, then click Reload to refresh the file listing. You should now see your site's files, with index.html or index.php sitting directly inside public_html.
4. Once you have confirmed everything extracted, select the zip file and click Delete. It counts against your disk space and does nothing useful sitting there.

Now load your domain in a browser. If you see your site, you are done. If you replaced an older version, press Ctrl+Shift+R (Cmd+Shift+R on a Mac) to bypass your browser cache.

If it didn't work

• You see a folder name instead of your homepage, or a directory listing. Your zip contained a wrapper folder. In File Manager, open that folder, select everything inside it, click Move, and set the destination to /public_html.
• You see "Index of /" or a default page. There is no index.html or index.php directly in public_html. Check the spelling and make sure it is lowercase.
• The upload stalls or fails partway. Very large zips can time out in a browser. Split the site into a few smaller zips and upload them one at a time.

Still stuck? Open a ticket at /support and tell us your domain, and we'll take a look.

Stuck partway through? Support is answered by the engineers who run the servers, around the clock.

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