When you connect to the server via FTP, SFTP or SSH, or enter the File Manager in Plesk, you will see a number of ready-made directories under your domain's home (usually /var/www/vhosts/domain.tld/, where domain.tld is your domain name). Each has a different purpose and all are created by Plesk for your domain in order to provide various functions.
You cannot rename or delete any of these directories, nor are you allowed to upload files into a directory unless it is within one of the directories with the required permissions (e.g. httpdocs/ for the main website files), as they contain files important to the running of your account. By managing the files in these directores through Plesk it helps prevents accidents, such as putting a file in the wrong place, deleting a file or changing a file's contents when you shouldn't. If you did something wrong in the conf/ directory, for example, your website could disappear from the internet!
The Plesk Directory Structure
The following directories are controlled by Plesk for your account and cannot be changed by you:
- bin/
- conf/
- error_docs/
- etc/
- lib/
- pd/
- statistics/
- usr/
- var/
You may not see all these directories. Later version of Plesk have reduced the number created automatically.
The remainder are for the hosting of your website. The following list explains the meaning behind each directory:
- bin/, etc/, lib/, pd/, tmp/, usr/, var/
Each of these directories forms part of the environment for the domain when you log onto the system using SSH, SFTP or SCP. All are controlled by the server and cannot be written to, except for tmp/, which can be accessed by all users/services on the system (has read-and-write permission for anyone). These are not important for day-to-day use by your account. In later version of Plesk, some may not be available. - anon_ftp/
This directory is where your anonymous FTP account is based (it is always there, regardless of whether your accounts supports it or not,
and whether or not it's enabled). Under this directory, pub/ can be used to put files into for downloading, while any uploaded files will go into incoming/. - conf/
This directory holds the basic configuration for your domain, needed by the web server. It can only be changed by Plesk itself, or our staff. If you require a change in this directory (for example, to permently change the open_basedir setting), you must Submit a Ticket to the Support Team. - cgi-bin/
This is the master cgi-bin for your website, and can be accessed from http://www.example.com/cgi-bin/. Any files run in a cgi-bin/ will be subject to the suEXEC security mechanism on the server. Each script must pass a number of security checks each time it's run. For more information about this, you can read our article: Why does my script fail to run in the cgi-bin? - error_docs/
This directory holds the default error documents for your site (the pages that are displayed on a 404 or Page Not Found error for example). There are a number of restrictions in this directory - you can only change the contents of the files. You cannot add new ones or delete the ones that are already there. For more information about how to setup custom error documents and change the contents of the files please read our article: How do I set-up custom error pages in Plesk? - statistics/
This directory contains all error and access logs for your domain, as well as compiled statistics (webalizer stats), if enabled. Like conf/, you cannot access this directory directly - only though the Plesk Control Panel by using the Log Manager icon under each domain. For details on how to view the access and error logs for each account, please see our article: Can I view my access and error logs?
To enable/disable the processing of your access logs through Webalizer
see How do I enable/disable my domain's statistics? and for how to view them see How do I view the statistics for my website? - httpdocs/, httpsdocs/
These directories are where your main website files will be held. httpdocs/ is for the standard website (http://www.example.com/) and httpsdocs/ is for the secure site (https://www.example.com/). Note that SSL is not enabled by default, and will not work properly when enabled unless a genuine certificate is installed. Also, since 7.5 Reloaded, Plesk has the ability to use just one directory (httpdocs/) for
both secure and insecure sites. For most websites, you will only need to use the httpdocs/ directory. - subdomains/
If you create any sub-domains in Plesk, their files will be held under this directory, not under httpdocs/. Each sub-domain created has it's own directory (e.g. subdomains/test/ for http://test.example.com/), under which are the directories httpdocs/, conf/
and cgi-bin/. All three have the same purpose as those in the home directory, where subdomains/test/httpdocs/ contains all the files for http://test.example.com/ and subdomains/test/cgi-bin/ is used for for http://test.example.com/cgi-bin/. - web_users/
If you want to create 'personal' spaces for friends, family, employees, etc., but don't want to let them directly access the website, or give them a sub-domain, you can set them up with their own Web User account.
Each Web User account will be stored under the web_users/ directory. For example, if you create the user 'username', their files will be held under web_users/username/, and they can access their space using http://www.domain.tld/~username/. (Web User accounts can only be accessed by using the ~ mark, as it tells the server to treat them as a Web User) - private/
The final directory, private/, is used to store any files you want, and they can only be accessed by the master FTP account for the domain (i.e.
if you create separate FTP accounts for each sub-domain, user, etc. they can't access the directory).
They also cannot be accessed by any programs/scripts except CGI scripts running in the cgi-bin/ of the main website. If you want to back up important files or need a place to temporarily store/copy files, the private/ directory is a good place to do it.
