Speed up remote SFTP downloads (for WordPress/Moodle)

Also - having gone back to PhpStorm, is there a "background download" method or way to run multiple PhpStorm apps? Seems crazy that I can't use PhpStorm for project A whilst I am downloading project B.

Hi there,

Downloads of remote servers via FTP takes a long time (not just in PhpStorm) - often many hours, yet I can gzip a site and have the same server on my PC in 3-4 minutes

Is there a plugin or method that speeds this up?

Unfortunately no.

Better gzip it yourself and download archive and then unpack locally.

Also a quick question - if someone else edits the files on the server, will PhpStorm pick up the changes?

It can check if file was modified just before uploading (and allow you to overwrite or cancel upload) -- then you can use "Synchronize with deployed..." and manually merge changes (to a local file .. which you can then upload to remote).

Such check will not be performed at random time -- only before uploading.

If the latter, I was thinking maybe I could just download the whole server myself and point PhpStorm to that directory when first setting up the remote server.

Not sure what you are asking here.

But yes -- you may download whole project to a local location and then just use "File | Open Directory..." (or just "Open..." from Welcome screen) and point to that folder (project root). Everything else you can setup later manually without any wizard.

Also - having gone back to PhpStorm, is there a "background download" method or way to run multiple PhpStorm apps? Seems crazy that I can't use PhpStorm for project A whilst I am downloading project B.

Sure -- you can even have multiple downloads/uploads in the same project. But that's only if you do not use dialog windows (e.g. Setup new project wizard).

My suggestion:

• Create new empty local project
• Configure the rest manually without any wizard:
  
  • Configure deployment entry and mark it as Default for this project.
    
  • Then you can use "Remote Host" tool window (or "Tools | Deployment | Browse Remote Host") to download your files to local location in background.

Yes, you may have more than one project opened at the same time -- they will be opened in separate windows ("frames" how they call it)

Many thanks for fast reply!

I'm using PhpStorm 2020.2, and starting a new Wordpress project from existing files on an SFTP server is INSANELY slow and takes a very long time to download from Wordpress Engine. Could you guys see about making this faster? I can use rsync or scp in the Terminal to download the files much faster, but suggesting work-arounds does not solve this problem. We pay you guys every month to use this application. Thanks!

There are two issues that make our deployment implementation slow:

1. The lack of multithreading: https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/WI-5580
2. Mandatory collecting of information for all files available under the server root: https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/WI-3268

Unfortunately, there's no ETA on fixing either of them. It's safe to conclude that it's easier to use something else for the initial download.