Sam, I'm not sure but you may be making things a little over complicated. To my knowledge, every server gives you FTP access, otherwise how would you ever be able to upload scripts to them. That would be like someone selling you a house but refusing to give you a front door key.
Allowing team members to have access to a server and uploading plugins worries me a lot. In reality, only one person should be responsible for this to maintain a stable and consistent web site. One ship, one captain!
FTP is not as confusing as it may seem. It's simply a means of getting files and plugins to the server. It's called "File Transfer Protocol" and that's all it is. It transfers files. You don't need to know a thing about Linux to use it.
First up you need an FTP program and there are many. FileZilla stands out as being the best and I've been using it for years. There are minimal settings required and you can use it for all sites on all you servers. I have about ten sites on 3 servers myself.
- Install Filezilla and open it.
- Go to File/Site Manager and a window will appear.
- Click the New Site button and give your site a name. Mysite.
- In the General Tab, enter:
Host: The host name for your site. Usually mysite.com.
Protocol: Select FTP
Encryption: Select Plain FTP
Login Type: Normal
User: Enter your site username supplied by Host and used to access the site or Control Panel.
Password: Ditto
- Go to the Transfer Settings tab and make sure the transfer mode is default.
- Click OK and you should be ready to FTP.
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- In the left pane of FileZilla locate the folder on your PC that contains the plugin. Keep in mind, that plugins are actually in a folder inside another folder. Click the first folder say xxx and you'll find yet another folder called xxx. That's the folder you must upload, not the first one.
- Go to the second pane and navigate to your oxwall site: often public_html/mysite.
- Go to the plugin's folder: /ow_plugins and open it.
- Drag the plugin folder from the left pane to the right pane and wait for it to be transfered. Somewhere on the screen you'l see the files being uploaded and it can take time on a busy server. Be patient.
A message like "Files Uploaded" will eventually appear.
- When finished, close Filezilla File/Exit, access Oxwall and the new plugin should appear in admin/plugins.
- Install the plugin
Once experienced, this process will take five minutes.
If you have multiple sites, when you open fileZilla/File/Site manager, choose the right site first. Usually FileZilla remembers the respective folders or you can force it to.
I've never found a host that uses different passwords for FTP. If the above doesn't work, ask the host for the correct paths and password.
