I was not sure why vsftp (or any other ftp software) was installed as part of the webserver. some quick notes, hope it helps anyone else having an issue. So I yum installed it. I had a bear of a time. But I finally got it to work doing the following. I had to add ip_conntrack_ftp to my iptables-config file or it would not work IPTABLES_MODULES="ip_conntrack_ftp" I had to add this line to my iptables file -A INPUT -m state --state NEW -m tcp -p tcp --dport 21 -j ACCEPT NOTE: I tried using other non standard ports, but this caused a problem upon connection with no way to fix it. I believe it has something to do with port 20 part of vsftp which short of rewriting source code seemed too much. So stick with the default port 21 to avoid any issues. in etc/vsftpd/vsftp.conf I left everything pretty much the way it was (after hours of fudging it around). I only changed anonymous_enable=YES to ' NO ' instead. ( I do not want anonymous users, just the few users on the system). This does not address virtual hosts as this is a virtual machine, thus just one website will be on it. The user/pass from a normal user was able to access the /var/www/html/ folder and modify it. That was all I wanted. I did not set up secure ftp yet (meaning I did not add a ssl cert of anything yet for it). I certainly hope this helps others. I was surprised I had to modify what I had to. I was surprised I was unable to change the port number and still want to give that a try. good luck.