Hello all!
I'm new to this forum, and would like to thank everyone in advance for their assistance and patience.

Using space on a friend's domain (hosted elsewhere), I am currently able to provide accessibility to files to the general public... ie. jpgs for eBay. In these cases, I can href to a URL thereby imbedding an image, or one could enter the URL to a directory in a web browser and view it's contents.

Now that I have my own domains hosted with Hostony, I'd like to stop being a leech to my buddy and accomplish the same thing with my own space. But I've been unsuccessful and am obviously missing something.

DNS is fine and I can resolve my site(s). I can see the contents of the web root level (public_html). I can FTP files there, and get my index.html file to work fine. I can create subdirectories and place files there... BUT one can't view the subdirectory contents (except with an FTP client) via a browser, can't view or access files or file contents at all, and can only see subdirectories one level below public_html. I've tried changing the permissions of the subdirectories (and files) to 777 (although I want them to be 755), but it still makes no difference. I don't know what else to do. Can someone tell me what I'm missing?

I haven't resorted to a 'website builder' yet because I really want to understand what's (not) going on. I've tried searching knowledge bases, and general web searches, FAQs, HTML books, and even Apache references... to no avail. So would someone please educate me, or tell me 'where to go'?

Thanks!
Ken

www.yourdomain.com in your browser should show you whats at public_html

to access your subdirectories it should be www.yourdomain.com/subdirectory

for instance .. mine (since you didnt post yours )
www.mysticalkoala.com/img


if this doesn't work make sure you you have the spelling/capitalization correct.

If you are presented with an error like so:
Forbidden
You don't have permission to access /images/ on this server.

----

you can put a .htaccess file in that dir you want to share with:

Options +Indexes

.....

this will allow browsing of that dir and the files within.

Hope that helps.

Jason

The tree structure looks like this (I tried various permissions at all levels):

ftp> o www.kellysurplus.com
Connected to kellysurplus.com.
220-=(<*>)=-.:. (( Welcome to PureFTPd 1.0.12 )) .:.-=(<*>)=-
220-You are user number 5 of 50 allowed.
220-Local time is now 19:31 and the load is 4.19. Server port: 21.
220-This is a private system - No anonymous login
220 You will be disconnected after 15 minutes of inactivity.
User (kellysurplus.com:(none)): ken
331 User ken OK. Password required
Password:
230-User ken has group access to: ken
230 OK. Current restricted directory is /
ftp>

If I point a browser to www.kellysurplus.com I appear to enter above the www level, because I can see the ken subdirectory, and public_html and it's www link. But I can't see the site_data directory even though it's wide open. (This isn't what I'm trying to access.):

ftp> dir
200 PORT command successful
150 Connecting to port 1970
drwxr-xr-x 3 32127 ken 4096 Jul 25 18:16 _system_
drwxr-x--- 3 32127 12 4096 Mar 4 2004 etc
drwxr-xr-x 2 32127 ken 4096 Mar 29 2004 ken
drwxrwx--- 3 32127 12 4096 Oct 8 06:27 mail
drwxr-xr-x 3 32127 ken 4096 Feb 29 2004 public_ftp
drwxrwxrwx 13 32127 99 4096 Oct 12 19:14 public_html
drwxrwxrwx 2 32127 ken 4096 Mar 29 2004 site_data
drwx------ 6 32127 ken 4096 Jul 27 02:44 tmp
lrwxrwxrwx 1 32127 ken 11 Mar 14 2004 www -> public_html
226-Options: -l
226 9 matches total
ftp: 591 bytes received in 0.00Seconds 591000.00Kbytes/sec.
ftp>

If I go to public_html, I can see the image directory, but not img. Nor can I see test.jpg or the test123 file:

ftp> cd public_html
250 OK. Current directory is /public_html
ftp> dir
200 PORT command successful
150 Connecting to port 1972
drwxr-xr-x 2 32127 ken 4096 Feb 29 2004 _private
drwxr-xr-x 4 32127 ken 4096 Feb 29 2004 _vti_bin
drwxr-xr-x 2 32127 ken 4096 Feb 29 2004 _vti_cnf
-rw-r--r-- 1 32127 ken 1754 Feb 29 2004 _vti_inf.html
drwxr-xr-x 2 32127 ken 4096 Feb 29 2004 _vti_log
drwxr-x--- 2 32127 99 4096 Feb 29 2004 _vti_pvt
drwxr-xr-x 2 32127 ken 4096 Feb 29 2004 _vti_txt
drwxr-xr-x 2 32127 ken 4096 Feb 29 2004 cgi-bin
drwxr-xr-x 3 32127 ken 4096 Oct 12 12:43 images
drwxr-xr-x 2 32127 ken 4096 Oct 12 19:23 img
-rw-r--r-- 1 32127 ken 2450 Feb 29 2004 postinfo.html
drwxrwxrwx 3 32127 ken 4096 Jul 15 22:48 public
-rwxr-xr-x 1 32127 ken 490908 Oct 12 18:27 test.jpg
drwxr-xr-x 2 32127 ken 4096 Oct 12 13:31 test123
226-Options: -l
226 14 matches total
ftp: 923 bytes received in 0.00Seconds 923000.00Kbytes/sec.
ftp>

Nor can I see the img directory, but here's what it contains... note that I also set one jpg wide open:

ftp> cd img
250 OK. Current directory is /public_html/img
ftp> dir
200 PORT command successful
150 Connecting to port 1980
-rwxr-xr-x 1 32127 ken 199256 Oct 12 18:30 Parts01_b.jpg
-rwxr-xr-x 1 32127 ken 191243 Oct 12 18:31 Transtalk_0b.jpg
-rw-r--r-- 1 32127 ken 33255 Oct 12 18:27 laserpointer_s.jpg
-rw-r--r-- 1 32127 ken 4634898 Oct 12 18:30 laserpointers.cpt
-rw-r--r-- 1 32127 ken 69274 Oct 12 18:30 lightguide_1b.jpg
-rwxrwxrwx 1 32127 ken 64884 Oct 12 18:30 lightguide_2b.jpg
-rw-r--r-- 1 32127 ken 733254 Oct 12 18:31 pic001b.jpg
-rw-r--r-- 1 32127 ken 31694 Oct 12 18:31 pic001s.jpg
226-Options: -l
226 8 matches total
ftp: 584 bytes received in 0.00Seconds 584000.00Kbytes/sec.
ftp>


Do you see anything I'm missing? Can you see any of my files from your end? Is there a .profile set up wrong somewhere, and if so, is it something I can/should change? I've tried www.kellysurplus.com/img, www.kellysurplus.com/public_html, www.kellysurplus.com/public_html/img... etc. All with no luck. Thanks Mystic, for letting me see your working URL. That at least lets me know that it should work.


Hi Jason,
Thank's for the input. I don't get any Forbidden or Access Denied errors, but I don't have any .htaccess files either. It sounds like perhaps I should.? Know anywhere I can go to find out how to make 'em? Is that the mechanism that will allow for instance, jpegs to be visible, but txt or mp3s not?

I REALLY appreciate the help!!

Ken

Well scratch the idea of using .htaccess, you are hosted in windows...

I'm really not a fan of windows hosting, and really dont have a clue as to how IIS handles directories/permissions/ or Virtual hosting.

Anyways... Ok this is what I can see so far... if you hit kellysurplus.com/~ken, you can see the image and the test files you made... So something is configured incorrectly... What is the ROOT domain for that account? If its kellysurplus there may be something configured incorrectly. If its something else, what is it, and does it work as expected?

Thanks Jason!
I have never was able to see ANY of those files until I used the tilde I saw you use! Thank you, thank you, thank you!!! What exactly does the tilde do/why does that work? (I mean what's the difference between www.kellysurplus.com/ken and www.kellysurplus/~ken?)

Also, what did you see that suggests to you that I'm hosted under IIS? It's my understanding that my host server is running Linux.

www.kellysurplus.com is the root domain.

But I should be able to do some work now!

Thanks Again!
Ken

NEvermind about the IIS thing, I was loosing my mind yesterday, didnt pay attention, just saw the Front Page Extensions and assumed.. blah..

Ok... If you are on a linux hosting plan then you need to put EVERYTHING you want web accessable under the public_html folder. Dont put them above it. Even if its a subdomain, or addon domain, it needs to be under public_html.

the ~ken tells the server to feed me the account under your username, and not under the domain (if there is redirect happening) ... so what I'm seeing is the contents of /home/ken/public_html or at least thats what I should be seeing, but it doesnt look like it... ???

Check your redirects in Cpanel, there might be somethng screwy going on there...

www.kellysurplus.com and www.kellysurplus.com/~ken should be the same if kellysurplus.com is the ROOT domain as you said. I checked with mine, its works like it should. Where as I put in www.myseconddomain.com/~username I should see www.myfistdomain.com's pages... That kind of works for anyone on your server. If you know the username of someone on the server, but not their domain name, you can enter www.yourdomain.com/~theirusername and see their root domain's pages... So all that tells me is that one of two things might be configured incorrectly... either the username ken is not mapped correctly (hostony or apache fault) or There is some redirect voodoo happening in Cpanel that is messed up...