Paths and Filenames

Paths
There are two paths you need to consider when setting up a server and creating documents to populate it. These are both set under the Paths & Labels Preferences.

HTTP Server Folder 
The HTTP server application (eg., WebStar, MacHTTP) is installed in a folder on your hard disk;  let's say it's named "www". If your hard drive were named "earth", then the path of all documents in the "www" folder (the server folder) would be

   earth:www

For example:

   earth:www:default.html
   earth:www:images:home.GIF
   earth:www:people:gbateson:gbateson.html

All documents you plan to distribute over HTTP must reside within the server folder or a folder nested within it.

HTTP File Path  
This is the pathname from the root of your HTTP server folder to your document, ignoring any path information higher than the HTTP server folder. In essence, the HTTP server is the root folder of your server. This is the path you may see within a URL if the document is within a folder in the server folder, not directly in the server folder itself.

Filenames
While you can include spaces and a lot of weird characters in Macintosh filenames, it's safer to stick with the letters A-Z, a-z, 0-9, and the underscore character, period and simple dash -- no spaces. Most other characters are either illegal or are interpreted in various ways by HTTP servers, such as the plus sign or question mark.

Back to Hosts File, on to Document Structure, or return to Design Issues.