A child site is a complete, standalone site, that includes access to all the features your plan allows, such as remote servers, automations, notifications, and so on.

Transferring Data Between Parent and Child Sites

Parent site administrators can choose a child site folder as the destination to move or copy files to in the File Manager. If they are copying or moving from a child site's folder in the underscore folder, they can copy between different child sites.

Users logged directly into a child site cannot move or copy files to the parent site, or to any other child sites.

Automations with Child Sites

Parent site administrators can use the underscore folder to create automations that interact directly with child sites. An automation that moves or copies can use child site folders as the source, destination or both. Automations can create folders or delete files from folders on child sites.

Automations created in child sites have no way to interact with parent sits or any other child sites.

User Permissions for Child Sites

Parent site administrators can grant other parent site users or groups permissions to any paths within a child site, with all of the permissions options. They can also grant other special permissions to give a user or group the same access as a site administrator or read-only administrator of a child site.

Site administrators cannot grant access to parent site folders within a child site.

Switching Web Sessions

Parent site users who are granted access to child sites will see a menu icon next to the logo of their web interface. This menu grants access to any sites the logged-in user can access. This allows a user with access to multiple child sites to seamlessly switch between their different sites.

History Logging

File actions that impact a child site, such as uploading, moving folders, deleting items, etc., could happen within the parent site (through the underscore folder) or on the child site. To keep things simple, each action will only be logged in one of the sites.

Actions in Underscore Folder on Parent Sites

When parent site administrators interact with the contents of a child site using the underscore folder, those changes are not logged within the child site.

Notifications or automations in the child site cannot be triggered by actions taken through the underscore folder on the parent site.

Actions in Child Site by Parent Site Users

When a parent site user connects to a child site, any actions they perform within the site are captured in the child site's logs only.

Automations configured on the underscore folder in the parent site cannot be triggered by file actions taken within a child site.

Direct Site Access

User accounts that are created directly within a child site can interact with the child site by authenticating directly with that site. They can use all of the features they have permission to access.

Child site users can access the site through the web interface, any enabled protocol access like FTP or SFTP, the mobile app or desktop application, an official Files.com SDK or the CLI.

Using API Keys with Child Sites

API Keys are linked to just one site. It doesn’t matter if the key is for the whole site or for one user - it only works with the site it was made for. If an API key was made for a parent site, it can only be used with that parent site. If it was made for a child site, it only works with that child site.

User-specific API keys have an extra rule - the user has to belong to the same site where the key was made. For example, if you make a key in a child site for a user from the parent site, it won’t work. Only users who are part of the same site as the key can use it.