As described by damontimm, it is possible to mount a SFTP folder (SSH + FTP) on a Debian based system using SSHFS and Fuse.

I followed his small tutorial, but had to change a few things.

First we install sshfs and add our own username to the fuse group (in this case wannes).

~$ sudo aptitude update
~$ sudo aptitude install sshfs
~$ sudo adduser wannes fuse

As stated on damontimm’s blog and this one, we’ll have to log out/in.
This can be a pain, so we might use this command, to get effective group permissions for this user.

~$ newgrp wannes

Now we create a folder on our own machine, on which we shall mount the remote resource.
In this case, I’ll be mounting the folder /var/www of the remote host.

~$ mkdir sftpfolder
~$ sshfs -o allow_other remote_user@remote_host:/var/www/ sftpfolder

I added the “allow_other” option, because without this option, only the user who ran sshfs can access the mount.