There are a number of ways to publish your website depending on if you are publishing to our Windows or Linux servers.
Windows Servers
Firstly you should understand how your Windows hosting space works. Within your hosting space are a number of different folders that are hidden from everyday web browsers but which are accessible via FTP and from our Control Panel File Manager. The folder structure looks something like this :
- Yourdomain.com
- data
- logs
- wwwroot
Note: If you have more than one website in your hosting space then you would have a set of these folders for each website you host.
Note: If you are a hosting reseller you may also have an additional folder below the domain name which identifies the user's space you have created.
Each folder has a function and we recommend this folder structure be left intact for the proper functioning of your webspace. Here is an overview of each folders function.
- data
This folder is for storing secure files, for example, access database files that can be accessed from your web applications but not directly by your website visitors. - logs
As the name suggests this is where all your raw weblogs are stored. You can download them to your local PC for safekeeping. - wwwroot
This folder is where you should place all your website files.
You can upload your website files in the following ways :
- Via FTP
Using your preferred FTP program (We recommend the FREE open source Filezilla FTP program) connect to our FTP server using the following settings :
Hostname: ftp.yourdomain.com<
Port: 21
Passive mode: off
User name: Assigned in your welcome letter
Password: Assigned in your welcome letter - Via the Control Panel File Manager
Sometimes it can be quicker and simpler when you are first uploading your website to use the file manager in our SolidCP control panel. Simply create a zip file of the files of your site locally and upload the zip file to the wwwroot folder using the file manager (or FTP if you like). Then use the unzip command to unpack the contents of your zip file. This can be much faster than transferring all the individual website files via FTP especially for large sites.
Linux Servers
Your main account website resides in the following folder, where is the userid you log into your account with.
/home/public_html/
Any subdomains or addon domains will be created by default underneath this folder, so for example, if you created an addon domain called ‘domain2.com’ in the control panel, then the path would be
/home/public_html/domain2/
If you created a subdomain for your account, for example, subdomain.domain.com, the path would be:
/home/public_html/subdomain/
Please note that you can also create folders within your root for hosting websites, in fact, we recommended this if you want to fully separate different websites, e.g you could create a folder in the root called /websites/ and create a folder for each domain called /websites/domain1/ and /websites/domain2/ etc and publish your websites to these folders instead.
You can upload your website files in the following ways :
Using FTP
Using your preferred FTP program (We recommend the free open source Filezilla FTP program) connect to our FTP server using the following settings :
- Hostname: ftp.yourdomain.com
- Port: 21
- Passive mode: on
- User name: Assigned in your welcome letter
- Password: Assigned in your welcome letter
Using the Control Panel File Manager
The file manager in the control panel allows you to upload multiple files simultaneously. If you are uploading a large number of files, it is often quicker to first compressed using zip, then upload and decompress using the file manager.
Note that the file manager also has the facility for editing files on your site, complete with a WYSIWYG HTML editor.
Using Web Disk
The Web Disk feature in the control panel allows you to create a folder in Windows, Mac OSX or Linux that represents your webspace. This is a very convenient way of managing your webspace as it allows you to directly edit, delete and add files, including dragging and dropping files between your PC and your website (this method uses the WebDAV protocol).
Select the Web Disk option in the control panel to create an account, then follow the prompts to use the appropriate method for connecting with your operating system.