# About Publishing Directories

When you set up your Web site, you specify which directories contain the documents that you want to publish. The Web server cannot publish documents that are not within the directories you specify. To plan your Web site, you first determine how you want your files organized in the publishing directories. This topic defines publishing-directory terminology and includes the following sections:

- Home Directories
- Virtual Directories

## Home Directories

Each Web site must have one home directory. The home directory is the starting point for your site visitors and the top of your Web publishing tree. It contains a home page or index file that welcomes visitors and contains links to other pages in your Web site. The home directory is mapped to your site’s domain name. For example, if a site’s Internet domain name is www.microsoft.com and the home directory is C:\Website\Microsoft, then Web browsers use the URL http://www.microsoft.com/ to access files in the C:\Website\Microsoft directory.

If you are creating new HTML files for your Web site, you may want to use the default home directory installed during setup, C:\Inetpub\Wwwroot. Place your files in the home directory, or organize them in subdirectories of this directory. All files in the home directory and its subdirectories are automatically available to visitors to your site. If a visitor knows the correct path and file name needed to reach a file, the visitor can view the file even if you do not have links to it on your home page. For this reason, keep only those files you want visitors to be able to view in your home directory, or its subdirectories.

If all the files you want to publish already reside in a certain directory, you can change the default home directory to that directory, rather than move the files. See Changing Your Home Directory for instructions on how to do this.

## Virtual Directories

To publish from any directory not contained within your home directory, you create a virtual directory. A virtual directory is a directory that is not physically contained in the home directory, but appears to client browsers as though it were.

A virtual directory has an alias, a name that client browsers use to access that directory. Because an alias is usually shorter than the path name of the directory, it is more convenient for users to type. An alias is more secure; users do not know where your files are physically located on the server and cannot use that information to modify your files. Aliases make it easier for you to move directories in your site. Instead of changing the URL for the page, you change the mapping between the alias and the physical location of the page.

For example, suppose you are setting up a Web site called Products on your company’s intranet to show the company’s products. The following table shows the mapping between the physical location of the files and the URL that accesses the files.

Physical Location | Alias | URL Path
--- | --- | ---
C:\Inetpub\Wwwroot | (Home Directory) | http://products/
C:\Inetpub\Wwwroot\Scripts | Scripts | http://products/scripts/
D:\Catalog1 | Clothes | http://products/clothes/

For instructions on how to create and map virtual directories, see Adding Virtual Directories.

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