• ssh yoursitebe@ssh.yoursite.be
• ssh yoursitebe@ssh123.webhosting.be

The first one may not work if your DNS records are not correct, the second one always works but is hard to remember. With just a small change to our local SSH config, we can use a third option: simply connect to your domain name!

• ssh yoursite.be

For this to work we have to tell ssh what to do with yoursite.be.

The local SSH config file

On computers running Linux and macOS, the configuration file can be found at:

~/.ssh/config

The file (or the .ssh directory) may not exist yet, you can create it manually.

Inside the file you can specify Host blocks to tell the SSH client what to do with certain hostnames. We'll use our domain name as that's the natural address to connect to when we want to update our website.

Host yoursite.be
	HostName ssh123.webhosting.be
	User yoursitebe

Host othersite.com
	HostName ssh472.webhosting.be
	User othersitecom

The correct values for the HostName and User parameters can be found after logging in to the My Combell control panel. Navigate to the correct web hosting account and click the SSH menu option on the left. You'll see the SSH host and SSH user name listed there.

After saving the file, you can connect right away:

ssh yoursite.be
Last login: Mon Dec 16 14:28:14 2019 from 178-221-32-24.access.telenet.be
yoursitebe@com-linssh123:~#

This also works when using scp or rsync to transfer files!