Picking up other people's uploads with Get Recent in FTP by Zaweba

When more than one person looks after a website, the first job of the day is usually catching up. Someone fixed a typo last night, someone else uploaded new photos this morning, and your copy on your PC knows nothing about either. Get Recent from Server in FTP by Zaweba is built for exactly this. It lists the server files changed within an age you pick, newest first, and lets you bring them down before you start your own work.

Choosing how far back

The quick choices are 15 min, 1 hour, 4 hours, 24 hours and 1 week. If none of those fits, type your own value in minutes, hours or days. Whatever you choose is remembered, so if you always catch up on the last 24 hours you only set it once.

The short windows are for live collaboration. If a colleague says they have just put up a new version of a page, 15 minutes or an hour shows it near the top and nothing else gets in the way. The longer windows are for coming back after a day or a week away.

What the list shows, and what it leaves out

Files are listed newest first, which matches how you think about it: the most recent change is the one you most want to see. Files that are already identical on your PC are not listed at all, so the list only contains things that would actually change your copy.

Only download newer is on by default. With it on, any file where your local copy is newer than the server's is left unticked. That protects work you have done locally and not yet uploaded. If you know the server copy is the one you want (for example, you have been experimenting locally and want to throw it away), untick Only download newer and those files are ticked too. Replaced copies go to the local history first, so even that choice can be undone.

Nothing downloads until you have looked at the list and agreed. Untick anything you do not want, then go ahead.

How it differs from Get Newer

Get Newer from Server compares the server with your local copy and lists every file that is newer there or missing locally, however long ago it changed. That is thorough, and it is the right choice when you have not touched a site for a long time or are not sure what state your copy is in. Get Recent narrows the question to a time window. On a big site, that often means a much shorter list that is easier to read, focused on the changes people are actually talking about.

A good rhythm for a shared site is Get Recent at the start of a session, your own edits in the editor with Live Preview beside them, and Put Newer or Put Recent at the end. If you have been away for a while, use Get Newer instead of Get Recent for the first catch-up.

Getting the most from it

Read the paths, not just the count. A list of images in an uploads folder means something quite different from a list of PHP files in a theme, and a glance at the folders tells you what kind of change someone made. If you want to see what actually changed in a text file before you replace your copy, right-click it and use Compare with Server Copy, which shows the changed lines side by side.

If the site has the site activity log turned on, Site Activity can show who made the changes as well. Get Recent tells you what changed; the activity log, when it is in use, helps tell you who.

Mistakes to avoid

Do not untick Only download newer out of habit. It is there to stop you overwriting your own unsent work. Turn it off only when you have decided the server should win. And remember that files matching the site's exclusion patterns are never transferred, so they will not arrive however recently they changed.

Five seconds spent on Get Recent before you start editing saves the far longer job of untangling two versions of the same page later on.