Introduction
	You administer your VPS over SSH (Secure Shell), which gives you an encrypted command-line session on the server, and transfer files over SFTP, which runs securely over that same SSH connection. Both are available the moment your VPS is provisioned — there is nothing to install — and both work identically on FreeBSD 15 and Rocky Linux 10.
	Connecting with SSH
	From a Mac or Linux machine, the ssh command is already present in the terminal. On Windows, the built-in OpenSSH client works the same way, or use a graphical client such as PuTTY. Connect with your username and your VPS's hostname or IP address: $ ssh youruser@your-domain.example Your server's key. A newly provisioned VPS is delivered with an SSH key — a .pem file — for a non-root administrative user (GSP disables direct root login over SSH by default; connect as that user and use su or sudo to become root). Save that file somewhere private, tighten its permissions, and point ssh at it with -i: $ chmod 600 your-key.pem $ ssh -i your-key.pem youruser@your-domain.example The first time you connect, SSH shows the server's host-key fingerprint and asks you to confirm it — answering "yes" records the key so future connections can detect impostors. Once logged in you are at a shell prompt; become root when you need administrative privileges.
	Transferring Files with SFTP
	SFTP replaces old, unencrypted FTP. It needs no separate server — if you can SSH in, you can use SFTP. From the command line: $ sftp youruser@your-domain.example sftp> put localfile.html # upload sftp> get remotefile.html # download sftp> bye For day-to-day work, a graphical client is friendlier. FileZilla is a popular free, cross-platform choice (Cyberduck and WinSCP work well too) — all of them speak SFTP, so they transfer files securely over the same SSH connection. The one thing that matters is to pick SFTP as the protocol (not plain, unencrypted "FTP"), with port 22 and your VPS credentials. To copy a whole directory tree quickly, scp -r and rsync over SSH are also available: $ scp -r ./site youruser@your-domain.example:public_html/ $ rsync -az --delete ./site/ youruser@your-domain.example:public_html/
	Going Further
	Two improvements are worth making early. Set up key-based authentication so you log in with a cryptographic key instead of a password — more convenient and far more secure — and then consider disabling password logins entirely. Both are covered, with the exact commands, on the Securing Your VPS page. You can also restrict an account to SFTP-only (no shell) for clients who should upload files but not run commands.
	Documentation
	The ssh(1), sftp(1), scp(1), and sshd_config(5) manual pages document the clients and the server. The OpenSSH project site has more: OpenSSH Manual