Tip: Location of Web Files for Virtual Host

Posted on January 25, 2013

This isn’t a question, just a tip that I hope someone finds useful. :)

If you follow Digital Ocean’s Virtual Host thread (https://www.digitalocean.com/community/articles/how-to-set-up-apache-virtual-hosts-on-ubuntu-12-04-lts) they recommend that you put your web files here:

/var/www/example.com/public_html

I find it better to add your web files to your user’s directory so that you have read/write access when you connect to the server with a Secure FTP client (like Transmit for Mac: http://panic.com/transmit). Otherwise, editing files in /var/www requires sudo permission which can be less convenient.

I prefer to put my files for a website in: /home/<user>/example.com

So here’s what my virtual host file (/etc/apache2/sites-available/sandlotillustrated.com) looks like for one of my domains. Note the custom error log location for easier, non-sudo access:

http://d.pr/n/6VqI

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