Skip to Content


telnet | shh

Secure Shell (SSH) Overview

Telnet access is only available with an SSH Client. We recommend one of the following:
  • Putty - free but not so user friendly
  • SecureCRT - not free but intuitive interface, worth the price.
SSH access is only available upon request.
If you would like SSH access, please call us 505-438-0505.

What is Secure Shell (SSH)?
When you SSH to your domain, you are controlling it, using the operating system of the server. Any commands you enter are run on the server (not your local PC) and operate according to the command parameters on the server.

Secure Shell (SSH) provides a command line interface that lets you run commands to modify the contents of your web site It encrypts all the data sent and received, providing a high level of security.

File and Directory Permissions
There are three levels of file permissions; read, write, and execute.  In addition, there are three groups to which you can assign permissions; file owner, user group, and everyone. 

The command chmod followed by three numbers is used to change permissions. The first number is the permission for the owner, the second for the group and the third for everyone. Here are how the levels of permission translate:
0 = --- No permission
1 = --x Execute only
2 = -w- Write only
3 = -wx Write and execute
4 = r-- Read only
5 = r-x Read and execute
6 = rw- Read and write
7 = rwx Read, write and execute


It is preferred that the group always have permission of 0. This prevents other users on the server from browsing files via FTP.  Here are the most common file permissions used:
chmod 604 [filename]
(r xr x r x)
Minimum permissions for HTML file
chmod 705 [directory name]
(drwxr x r x)
Required permissions for directories
chmod 755 [filename]
(r xr x r x)
Required permissions for scripts & programs
chmod 644 [filename]
(rwxr x r x)
Permissions for data files used by scripts