How Do I Upload Changed Files Via FTP? (wordpress)

I'm used to git and command line stuff, but working on a wordpress site freelancing. I have FTP access, but the site I'm working on has like 16,000 files just in wp-content. Is there a way to automatically only upload changed files? I'm using Filezilla and there's an option to do that, but going through 16,000 files takes hours anyway. I know I could use git and do things manually, but that's a pain.

I'm open to suggestions outside of FTP if there's any easier way in general for wordpress dev.

Since you're bound to FTP¹, your options are quite limited. There are free (in limited capacity) services to deploy to SFTP² via git. Some examples: DeployBot, Buddy.works, DeployHQ, etc. There is also Beanstalk, which I've used in the past and it worked rather well, but the free account is limited to 100MB (which would obviously not work for your situation, and it sounds like the client is too cheap to buy a paid account). It is a bit odd to me to store media library in git, but that is another topic and I understand your dilemma.

¹I would highly recommend using the insecurities of FTP as an argument to try to convince the client to switch to... literally anything else.

²Not certain if these services support FTP (as opposed to SFTP). You would probably need to ask, but they may not given the insecurity of FTP.

EDIT - There may also be some open source options like this (albeit old) solution: https://github.com/mehedi101/ftploy (purely as an example; there are others, but they appear to vary in complexity and I have not tried them)