SSH and basic commands

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What is SSH?
SSH is a protocol that allows you to connect to a remote computer - for example, your Web server - and type commands to be carried out on that computer, such as moving and copying files, creating directories (folders), and running scripts. To talk to your Web server via SSH, you need an SSH client on your computer - see below - and you also need three pieces of information:

Connecting using an SSH client on Windows
There are many free and commercial SSH client programs available for Windows. A good, popular free client is PuTTY. To use it, simply download the putty.exe file, then double-click putty.exe on your computer to run it. You'll see PuTTY's configuration dialog appear:

Connecting using an SSH client on Mac OS X or Linux
If you use a Mac or run Linux, you're in luck, as Mac OS X and Linux both come with a built-in SSH client. To use it, you first need to open a terminal window. On Mac OS X, you can do this by double-clicking the Terminal application inside Applications/Utilities in the Finder. To open a terminal on Linux, consult your distribution's documentation; usually it's available via the applications menu.