Windows users should be quite familiar with shortcuts, which allow them to launch programs by creating a link to the executable. Linux users too can create shortcuts, to quickly launch files and folders. The shortcuts in Linux are also known symbolic links.

Creating shortcuts definitely saves you a lot of time, if you have several folders and browsing to them would require you to change directories frequently a simple shortcut would save you the time required to browse to the folder.

We have symbolic links to our themes and plugins folders for this site in the FTP SFTP user home directory. The symbolic link ensures that we can easily navigate to the folders, without having to go through multiple directories to reach the destination file or folder. Using this simple trick you can open any folder by just using a single click or command in Linux.

In Linux based systems, you can use the “ln” command to create symbolic links to any file or folders, for example we created a symbolic link to our plugins folder using the following command.

ln –s ~/var/www/techie-buzz.com/wp-content/plugins

The “-s” parameter tells the command to create a symbolic link (aka shortcut) rather than a hard link. Once you have created the symbolic link you can use the “cd” command to traverse to the folder, the “cd” command will take you to the actual folder you created a link for, check the screenshot below;

You will also see a shortcut to the plugins folder when you login to your FTP site, check the screenshot below;

Simple things like this add up to save you a lot of time and keep you productive. Every few seconds you save, can add up to a enormous amount of time, so go ahead and create those shortcuts in Linux using symbolic links and start exploring your files and folders with ease, if you have any questions or queries feel free to contact us.

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