HTTP Document Server

HTML documents on the Wide World Web are commonly transferred from server (WWW server) to requesting client (like Mosaic) by using HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP). An WWW Document Server responds to an HTTP request (referred to as an URL) and serves the requested HTML document to the requesting client (usually Mosaic).

Note: If you are a new user and want to serve your HTML documents, read about UserDir

There are two directory trees that can serve HTML documents:

DocumentRoot:
This is the HTTP server's official directory root for serving HTML documents to URL requests (if the URL does not reference any user-directory i.e. no ~user in the URL). All URL requests will be prepended the value of DocumentRoot to the directory specification of the URL.
The current value of DocumentRoot is: /local/www
```
Example:

If the URL request is for the following document: 

   http://<www-host>.Stanford.EDU/html-docs/doc.html

It will automatically be translated into:

   http://<www-host>.Stanford.EDU/local/www/html-docs/doc.html
```
where <www-host> is the name of the WWW server.
The directory tree is write-protected and can only be updated by authorized users.
UserDir
Each user can serve HTML documents from a specified user subdirectory (name of subdirectory is given by the UserDir directive) in their home directory. Users may create this directory and subsequently create HTML documents to be served. The value of UserDir will be prepended to the URL request whenever a URL reference a user directory.
The current value of UserDir is: public_html
```
Example:

The URL request is for document: 

   http://<www-host>.Stanford.EDU/~user/doc.html

It will automatically be served from:

   http://<www-host>.Stanford.EDU/~user/public_html/doc.html
```
where <www-host> is the name of the WWW server.
The directory and directory path should have proper access specification to serve a HTML document to requests, see problem solving.

Kent Husefest