I just finished building my personal website using Visual Studio Code and wanted to upload it to my Xisto account. I’ve been poking around the cPanel File Manager and noticed both a public_html folder and a www folder, and they seem to have the same content. I’m confused about which one I should upload my files to.
I remember reading that FrontPage 2003 (which is ancient now) had some FTP integration, but I’m using FileZilla as my FTP client. I just want to make sure I put my index.html and other files in the right place so my site shows up.
Can anyone clarify the difference? And is there a best practice for uploading - like using FTP vs the File Manager? Thanks!
Topic Summary: Confused about uploading site to Xisto: public_html vs www folders. Built site with VS Code, using FileZilla. Which folder is correct for index.html?
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Hey there! Great question – it trips up a lot of new folks. The short answer: public_html and www are aliases – they point to the exact same directory on the server. So you can upload your files to either one and they’ll appear in both. It doesn’t matter which you use.
Now, if one ever gives you trouble (like an FTP timeout on public_html), just switch to the other – they’re identical. But generally, stick with public_html as it’s the more commonly recognized standard.
As for upload method: I’d recommend using an FTP client like FileZilla – it’s faster and more reliable for bulk uploads than the cPanel File Manager (which works fine for a few files but can be clunky with many). Just make sure you set your remote directory to /public_html in FileZilla, connect with your Xisto FTP credentials, and drag away.
Also, since you’re using VS Code, you could look into the SFTP extension – it lets you sync directly from your editor. That’s a pretty modern workflow!
Hope that clears things up. Welcome to Xisto – happy hosting!
Video Tutorial:
Official Documentation & Reference Links: