Document Root
A term, originally named after the configuration parameter DocumentRoot
which is defined for the Apache web server, which has come to mean the top-level directory of a web server. It is usually a real physical directory (or folder) on the hosting server's fie system and any documents or directories placed in DocumentRoot
will themselves become resources on the web site's URI. the URI “/” on the host operating system is mapped to the physical directory defined by the DocumentRoot
parameter and any other static documents, resources and directories contained within the DocumentRoot
will be mapped to the file path part of the URI relative to DocumentRoot
. So for example, if you install the Drupal CMS on your web server, DocumentRoot
will contain a folder drupal
which contains index.php
: the URI will be http://host.domain/drupal/index.php or more simply http://host.domain/drupal/. Although the file path part of the URI hints at a traditional (Unix-like) file structure, the modern web server's support of Virtual Directories, Virtual Hosts, CGI scripts, web applications and URL rewriting, means that this will not necessarily be the case. In a sense web server URIs are similar to Unix file systems in that they appear to form a single rooted file hierarchy which in facts hides the actual location of the resources that a web server provides.
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