What is the Difference between Files in www and public_html folders?

Asked by:
CDSherlock / 130 Points
Time:
2013-09-17 10:27 pm EST
Category:
File Management
Hits:
9,949
I recently copied the files from a localhost site I created to my site on Web Hosting Hub by Filezilla. After dragging and dropping to the public_html folder some files that ended up in the root directory, I compared the www folder on the local site to the public_html folder and noticed the following differences:

In www folder but not in public_html folder: .htaccess, wp-config.php, wp-config.php.txt, wp-mail.php, wp-settings.php, wp-signup.php, wp-trackback.php, xmlrpc.php.

In public_html folder but not in www folder: php.ini, phpinfo.php.

Should I copy the files listed above between the www and public_html folders so that the contents of the two folders match? Thanks for any help!

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ANSWERS

1

JacobN
Staff
3,713 Points
2013-09-17 10:41 pm EST
Hello CDSherlock, and thanks for your question.

On our server the public_html directory is where your website's default files are pulled from. The www directory is simply a symbolic link to the public_html one. So anything you place in either directory will be identical when viewed from the other directory on the server.

If you have a local site setup, and all of the site files are in a directory called www, simply opening up that directory, and then uploading all of those files to the public_html directory on our server should be all you need to do.

You'll need all of your local site files on the server, so I'd recommend any that you're seeing in your local www directory get uploaded to the server's public_html directory. Or you can put them in the www directory on the server as well, as again this is simply a pointer to the exact same files found in the public_html directory.

Please let us know if you needed any further assistance getting your files moved to the proper location. You might also like to read our article on what directory should I upload files to that explains a bit more how files are read from the server-side.

- Jacob

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