Webhosting Special Pages And Directories

Special files and directories

You can create any files and directories in your /www/ directory. If you want to provide a web site just under your domain name, e.g. http://testing.me.uk/ then there are some restrictions on directories you can use - you cannot use bin, etc, lib, tmp, or usr. These are also unavailable as sub domains (e.g. you cannot have http://bin.testing.me.uk/. See below for redirection if you want http://testing.me.uk/ to redirect to http://www.testing.me.uk/

These restrictions are because the system creates a fake root environment for your scripts to use. This is set up automatically the first time you use ftp to access the site. Note that this is not set up by access using rsync. You should always log in using ftp at least once to create the directories otherwise rsync will not work.

Index Pages

You can have an index.html (normal web page index), or index.htm, or index.cgi, or index.gif. You can also use index.wml for WAP phone use.

In any directory, including the main /www/ directory, you can have an index (called index.html ). This is displayed if someone goes to the site or directory without specifying a file name. e.g. http://www.testing.me.uk/fred/ will access /www/fred/index.html on your web site.

Sub-domains

Note that any subdomains for which you have DNS entries appear as directories in your web space. e.g. http://www2.testing.me.uk/ is the same as http://testing.me.uk/www2/ and is in the /www2/ directory. It is sensible to make links to other directories absolute (e.g. with http://www.testing.uk/, etc) so that viewing in different ways does not cause problems.

Password files

The file password.txt in any directory is also special - see passwords. The file errlog.txt in the top level directory is also special, see scripts. Files with an error number, e.g. 404, and .html, are also special, see custom error pages.

Log Directory

The directory called weblog is also special as it is used for web logs, see below.