Directory and File Structure - Linux

Directory/Folder Structure

From amongst the several directories found within your cPanel account, only the following are important:

Directory Contents
/public_html contains all files that are part of the website. Any file and folder inside this directory is visible over the Internet unless you password protect it. See details

 
/www is simply a link to the public_html directory.

File Structure

MewHosting's cPanel hosting servers will check for the existence of one of the below files and based on the order specified below, display it's content as the Home Page, when anyone tries to list the content of any folder/directory:

  1. index.html

  2. index.htm

  3. index.php

  4. index.php3

  5. index.php4

  6. index.shtml

  7. default.html

  8. default.htm

  9. default.php

  10. home.html

  11. home.htm

  12. home.php

  13. index.pl

  14. home.pl

  15. default.pl

Examples

  • If you were to upload a file index.html within the public_html folder of your website somedomain.com, then when someone tries to reach either somedomain.com or www.somedomain.com, then they would be automatically displayed the content of the index.html file. This happens since our server treats the index.html as the home page or default page for this directory.

  • Similarly, if you were to upload an index.html file within the /public_html/plants folder, then when someone types somedomain.com/plants or www.somedomain.com/plants, then they would be automatically displayed the content of the index.html file within the plants folder.

  • Now, if you were to upload two or more files from amongst the list given above, then the one mentioned higher in the order would be considered as the home page. So in the event that there exists an index.php and default.html file within the same folder, then the index.php file will get considered as the home page.