title: How to Zip an Azure Website
body: <p>I have a WordPress installation on an Azure Website (not a WebRole). I have FTP access to the site but it literally can take like an hour, which is insane because if I could just ZIP the thousands of files on the site (due to all the plugins, etc) it might take 5 seconds to run the zip. Downloading that then would be far more reliable, as its just 1 file, not 10,000 that could get messed in transfer. Traditional hosters allow you to get on their control panel and zip folders, for instance, but FTP doesn't allow this.</p>
  
  <p>So can I do this on an Azure website, any way, shape or how??? I've looked a bit into SFTP which seems to have some such capabilities but it doesn't seem to be implemented in Azure websites. What can I do, this whole work flow is despisable, I can't live with it, it discourages backups. This encourages one to go to a traditional shared host but I would rather not if possible.</p>