Yes, always backup before playing lol... It cannot be stressed enough
...
Some good SSH command line knowledge can go a long way, most of the things you can do through FTP you can do through SSH (and those that you can't you can use SCP).
I use the SSH Secure Shell application from SSH.com (available
here) because it allows me to use SSH keys to connect to my server (versus storing passwords on the server), but thats just my paranoid ways hehe...
