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Question

var/www to home/user/public_html?

  • Posted February 20, 2014

Hello, I’m newbie on VPS configuration but I learn quick. I have a doubt about the server arquitecture.

I want to have my VPS as clean as possible, and in my old webhost server I could see I have two folders with the exact same info: var/www and /public_html

As I understand, var/ww is a backup of /public_html which is the folder where Internet users go when they visit my website, is that correct?

How can I do that on my VPS?

My thoughts tell me that I can create the folder for each site on /home/user/public_html and create the FTP users with limited privileges, but what happens with the var/www folder?

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FMCB • February 21, 2014

you can always create a custom folder to point your OS to the root of your vhost. <br> <br>what is your OS? Nginx or Aapche?

Andrew SB • April 21, 2014

@Farooq Yousuf: That should be fine. The only issue you might face is if you are trying to run multiple site from the droplet, but it’s really only a matter of personal preference and organization. You can setup apache to serve files from anywhere. It’s just keeps things organized nicely to use layouts like: <br> <br>/var/www/site1.com <br>/var/www/site2.com

farooqyousuf1 • April 20, 2014

Kamal, <br> <br>Mistakingly I put my site contents directly in /var/www and not in /var/www/example.com/public_html. Everything is working fine. I’ve a LAMP Wordpress running. <br> <br>Do you think I should move all the files from /var/www to /var/www/example.com/public_html? If I move the files, do you think it will cause any issues for my sites?

Kamal Nasser • February 23, 2014

<blockquote>var/ww is a backup of /public_html</blockquote> <code>/var/www</code> the webserver’s default documentroot. Shared hosting panels use slightly different directory names and paths but you don’t have to do the same. <br> <br><blockquote>My thoughts tell me that I can create the folder for each site on /home/user/public_html </blockquote>You can do that but it’s preferred to create a directory for each site in <code>/var/www</code> e.g. <code>/var/www/example.com/public_html</code> <code>/var/www/example2.org/public_html</code> and then storing the files in the corresponding <code>public_html</code> directories. <br> <br>As for FTP, don’t do that. Use SFTP instead: <a href=“https://www.digitalocean.com/community/articles/how-to-use-filezilla-to-transfer-and-manage-files-securely-on-your-vps”>https://www.digitalocean.com/community/articles/how-to-use-filezilla-to-transfer-and-manage-files-securely-on-your-vps</a>. It’s installed by default and it much more secure.