Introduction
You will notice 5 directories upon first glance of your home directory: public_ftp - This is the directory for your anonymous FTP site . public_html - This is the directory where you should upload your web pages to. www - This directory is a symbolic link for public_html meaning it is the exact same directory mail - This is the directory where all your mail is stored. Do NOT change permissions on this directory, or this feature provided may fail to work. tmp - This is the directory where misc. information such as web statistics are stored. Do NOT change permissions on this directory, or this feature provided may fail to work. Please continue reading for further details on each of these directories.
» public_ftp - This is the directory for your anonymous FTP site.
» public_html - This is the directory where you should upload your web pages.
» www - This directory is a symbolic link for public_html meaning it is the exact same directory
» mail - This is the directory where all your mail is stored. Do NOT change permissions on this directory, or mail may fail to work.
» tmp - This is the directory where misc. information such as web statistics are stored. Do NOT change permissions on this directory, or your web stats may fail to work.
Contents of your home directory
When your account at Pappashop is activated, we assign space for you on one of our servers, and configure the web, ftp and email servers , to use the files in this space. This space is your home directory, and is where your web site files and other items are stored.
Your home directory also holds many of the configuration files for your site. Whenever you FTP into your account, you will be initially placed in your home directory. Initially you will see only a handful of files in your home directory, but these will grow over time and as you use more features of your account.
Generally speaking you will be most concerned with two directories in particular. public_ftp and public_html ;these directories are the 'root directory' for your FTP and HTTP [i.e. web] servers, respectively. It is important to quickly grasp the relationship between files placed in these directories, and how they will be accessed by visitors to your site.
The primary method people will be accessing your site, are through HTTP (hypertext transfer protocol). You have encountered these before in URL's (web address) in your browser, written like this in the address bar:
http://
The directory 'public_html' , point to the top-level directory for files to be accessed through HTTP respectively.
To illustrate - when a visitor to your site points their browser to
http://www.yourdomain.com/index.html - they will receive the file 'index.html' from the directory 'public_html' in your home directory
This presents another notable fact here, there is no way for anyone to access files directly within your home directory from the internet. The 'highest' they can access is sub directory [public_html] This is known as the servers being 'rooted' in those directories.
example: The HTTP server is rooted in your public_html directory; If you imagine the layout of the directories and sub directories beneath each of these two main directories as being like the branches of a tree, splitting off and branching into many sub directories, it becomes easy to see why the term 'root' directory makes sense here
This being the case, it means you can leave private and work-in-progress files in your home directory itself, without them being accessible publicly. A useful thing to note, especially when creating password files for web pages, databases of credit card orders, and other such sensitive information.
When you log into your account [FTP -(MS Front Page does not give you access to your home directory) you will be located in your home directory. Take note of this, as files uploaded directly into your home directory will not be available to anyone but yourself over the internet - instead they must be placed in the public_html directory
Depending upon your mode of access to your home directory, you will see a third directory - 'www'. A special note of warning is in order regarding this. The 'www' directory is a link to your public_html directory. This is present as some elements of our web server's access your web pages through this link. Entering this directory will place you into your public_html directory. Please note, the www directory is not a duplicate of your public_html directory, and occupies none of your quota of space on the server. Please do not delete it or otherwise alter it, or several aspects of your web site may cease to function.
