Virtual Private Server User Guide

The Apache Web Server

By default, Apache recognizes the file called index.html as the directory index. 

The directory index is the page that comes up by default when someone accesses 

a directory within your document root. In the example of a site called 

www.example.com, the file that would be displayed when a visitor typed http://

www.example.com into their Web browser would be /www/vhosts/

www.example.com/htdocs/index.html. 

Methods for publishing a Web site

There are a variety of different tools and methods for creating a Web site and 

publishing it on your VPS server. Some people prefer using a commercial Web 

site creation tool such Microsoft FrontPage, NetObjects Fusion, Macromedia 

Interdev, or one of several others. With these tools it is typical to create Web 

pages on your PC and then upload them through FTP, Samba, or another file 

transfer method. In the case of Microsoft FrontPage, there are extensions built 

into the FrontPage Apache module itself that can take care of file transfers 

automatically. Information on installing the Microsoft FrontPage extensions is 

found later in this chapter.

Other people prefer to write the HTML code for Web pages from scratch using one 

of the online text editors provided by your VPS server. Many people choose to 

take advantage of the powerful capabilities provided by development tools such 

as PHP and Perl, which are also provided on the server. These tools can also be 

used together with the MySQL database server to create fast, dynamic Web 

pages that pull content from SQL databases.

There are other possibilities as well, such as outsourcing the design, creation, and 

management of your Web site content to someone else, and giving them limited 

access to your virtual server in order to do so.

Correct Permissions For Web Files

Whatever means you choose to develop and manage your Web site, you need to 

make sure that your Web files are given the correct permissions so that Apache 

can read the pages and serve them to your visitors. 

Apache runs as a special user called nobody. This means that for Apache to serve 

up your Web pages to visitors, the files either need to be readable to the world, or 

they need to be owned by the nobody user. Which of these approaches you take 

depends on your needs. 

Every virtual host, including the initial one that was created when your server was 

created, has its own user group created with it. This group is intended to allow 

multiple people to work on and contribute Web content to your site. Even if you 

are the only one who will be working on your site, it is your membership in the 

group that allows you to upload files to the document root of the virtual host. One 

Technical Training Department

August 2004

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