Member Avatar for jordymae

All,

I'm so new to this and I know I've been screwing up big time. I'm hoping you can help me. And sorry about the long post. If I knew how to spilt that into multiple questions, I would.

I purchased a private server hosting package from some company(Co A). Trying to host one domain(www.freakingout.com) which we purchased somewhere(Co B) else. I don't think I manage the DNS or own the DNS because I need to contact the tech folk at Co. A about pointing that domain to the DNS. Before that's done, I also needed to go to the Control Panel and set up a site for freakingout.com and provide them an administrator(jordymae). When I logged in as root to the linux, I saw that they've created /home/virtual/site1/fst/var/www/ which is the source for the link of /home/virtual/freakingout.com/var/www/. Anyway, I was able to then open a FTP window, uploaded some files there. And I was able to access the files using freakingout.com/. But after Co A and Co B have done their part(or you call that propagate?), going to freakingout.com shows the default index.html file I didn't see before. It's a whole new file structures different than the one I saw before the changes took effect.

I then su - jordymae, I see mainwebsite_html and mainwebsite_cgi folders. I then saw the files I was able to access on the web in the html folder. I tried to FTP using the root but all I saw was the files owned by jordymae. So I'm not sure if if freakingout.com is considered as Virtual Host and that I will need to modify the httpd.conf file, or what? I'm just plain confused. I've been reading a lot of forums and how-to but I guess I don't understand enough about the definitions to begin with. Anyway, I'm stuck.

Thanks for reading this. I'd appreciate your help very much!

Jordy Mae

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Dani AI

Generated

Most likely this is a VirtualHost / DocumentRoot mismatch: when you browsed by IP (or by a path off the IP) you hit a different site root than the name-based vhost Apache is using after DNS was pointed at the server. is right to push you toward checking the DocumentRoot.

Quick diagnostic checklist you can run on the server:

# show which vhosts Apache knows about
apachectl -S    # or: apache2ctl -S   or: httpd -S

# simulate the Host header to compare responses
curl -I -H "Host: www.yourdomain.com" http://SERVER_IP/
curl -I http://SERVER_IP/

Look for a VirtualHost whose ServerName/ServerAlias matches your domain and check its DocumentRoot. If you find the control-panel-created site (the folder you saw, e.g. the html folder), that is the directory Apache will serve for the domain. If no matching vhost exists, Apache serves the first/default vhost it finds.

Fix options (pick one):

  • Put your site files into the DocumentRoot the control panel expects (fastest if you cannot edit Apache config).
  • Edit/create the VirtualHost so ServerName points to your domain and DocumentRoot points at the folder you uploaded to, then reload Apache:
    systemctl reload httpd    # or: systemctl reload apache2  (or use service ...)

Permissions/FTP notes:

  • FTP accounts are often jailed to their site folder; root FTP may be restricted. Use SFTP/SSH to inspect the whole filesystem if needed.
  • Ensure files are readable by Apache (directories 755, files 644) and owned or readable by the Apache user (apache/www-data).

If you cannot find or change the vhost files, contact your host and tell them which DocumentRoot you want the domain to use; mention the exact path you uploaded into and the ServerName to match.

Member Avatar for YUPAPA

If you look for the documentroot of freakingout.com, you should be able to know the full path the web pages should store to ~

Probably things you have stored to freakingout.com/ has a different document root than freakingout.com ~

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