One of the tools I recommend to edit the files on your server (instead of editing them directly via SSH) is WinSCP.
A necessary step if you set the crucial setting “PermitRootLogin = yes” in your ssh.conf is to switch to a specific user while loggin on. To do that you can define a shell with the following command:

sudo su - "user"

I’m going to post a screenshot of this if it requires a detailed explanation, but you should be able to find the option in the advanced menu.