Its been a few months since I last updated any websites but when trying to update 2 of them yesterday I kept getting the same message when trying to publish. I’ve checked the FTP login details and they are correct. I tried opening 2 more websites and re publishing but every site gives the same error message which is ‘Couldnt sign in to your FTP server - Timeout was reached’. As i said I’ve checked the credentials for all of the websites and the name and passwords are correct. It does this whether I try to publish or try to test the connection from the publishing settings.
When the issue appeared I realised it had to be with either the software or the hosting provider so at the same time as posting here I contacted my hosting provider who after a while told me they had indeed made a change to ensure that only encrypted FTP connections were allowed. When I asked them why I hadn’t been notified they told me they didn’t notify customers of security updates!!
ANyway the problem is solved, thanks all for the responses.