SFTP authentication

Question

So I'm trying to give FTP access to a web share that a website is hosted from.  I tried connecting with Filezilla and it says it cannot establish a connection to an sFTP server with FTP.
So I tried FTP, and it says authentication failed.
BUT, it doesn't fail when I log in with my admin account that I use to administer the server.
I checked the permissions of the folder, the share, and the FTP, and they all allow the user I want to access it in, but it still fails.

Answer 1

The morass known as ftp is older than the internet, the protocol is problematic around modern network components including firewalls, and the implementation is wildly insecure.  Put another way, it's hard to get working, it tends to be sensitive to any firewall changes, and it leaks your passwords in cleartext.
To allow access via ftp, turn off all intervening firewalls, either at the client and firewalls in front of the client, or at the server and firewalls in front of the server, or better — both.  (That's not usually an option, of course, but that's the world that ftp was built for.)   You could get a firewall that can sniff the ftp traffic and detect the secondary link the protocol opens and open the port, or that triggers on ftp traffic and opens the whole port range.  Or you could open the whole of the ephemeral port range, or whatever secondary port range ftp is configured to use.
Here's how to get ftp going on OS X, and here's why you might not want to;  some details on the protocol processing, the direction of the connections, the ephemeral ports, and related details.
Local preference is sftp; to configure and use that for access into the web server.  sftp shares three letters with ftp and its general purpose, but is otherwise a completely different and vastly more modern and much more secure transfer mechanism.  sftp operates atop the ssh protocol, which will have to be enabled on the target system; enabling ssh enables both ssh and sftp, and a few other tools that can use the ssh protocol.    It's encrypted.  And You can also set up site-local certificate-based logins with ssh and sftp, so the users either have a passphrase and a certificate, or a no-password login and a certificate if you want that; certificates are basically gonzo passwords.
Filezilla and Cyberduck can both use sftp for GUI users, and there are command line tools that are part of OS X and OS X Server.