<!--#include virtual="header.html" -->
<h1 align="center">Mapping URLs to Filesystem Locations</h1>
-<p>This document explains the method in which Apache determines
-what filesystem location to serve a file from based on the
-URL of a request.</p>
+<p>This document explains how Apache determines the filesystem
+location from which to serve a file using the URL of a request.</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="#documentroot">DocumentRoot</a></li>
<p>In deciding what file to serve for a given request, Apache's
default behavior is to take the URL-Path for the request (the part of
-the URL following the first single slash) and add it to the end of the
+the URL following the hostname and port) and add it to the end of the
<a href="mod/core.html#documentroot">DocumentRoot</a> specified in
your configuration files. Therefore, the files and directories
underneath the <code>DocumentRoot</code> make up the basic document
<h2><a name="outside">Files Outside the DocumentRoot</a></h2>
<p>There are frequently circumstances where it is necessary to allow
-web access to parts of the filesystem which are not strictly
-underneath the <a href="mod/core.html#documentroot">DocumentRoot</a>.
-Apache offers several different ways to accomplish this. On Unix
-systems, symbolic links can be used to bring other parts of the
-filesystem under the <code>DocumentRoot</code>. For security reasons,
-symbolic links will only be followed if the <a
-href="mod/core.html#options">Options</a> setting for the relevant
-directory includes <code>FollowSymLinks</code> or
-<code>SymLinksIfOwnerMatch</code>.</p>
+web access to parts of the filesystem that are not strictly underneath
+the <a href="mod/core.html#documentroot">DocumentRoot</a>. Apache
+offers several different ways to accomplish this. On Unix systems,
+symbolic links can bring other parts of the filesystem under the
+<code>DocumentRoot</code>. For security reasons, Apache will follow
+symbolic links only if the <a href="mod/core.html#options">Options</a>
+setting for the relevant directory includes
+<code>FollowSymLinks</code> or <code>SymLinksIfOwnerMatch</code>.</p>
<p>Alternatively, the <a href="mod/mod_alias.html#alias">Alias</a>
-directive can be used to map any part of the filesystem into the web
+directive will map any part of the filesystem into the web
space. For example, with</p>
<blockquote><code>Alias /docs /var/web/
-</blockquote></code>
+</code></blockquote>
<p>the URL <code>http://www.example.com/docs/dir/file.html</code> will
be served from <code>/var/web/dir/file.html</code>. The <a
the same way, with the additional effect that all content located at
the target path is treated as CGI scripts.</p>
-<p>For situations where additional flexibility is required, the <a
-href="mod/mod_alias.html#aliasmatch">AliasMatch</a> and <a
+<p>For situations where you require additional flexibility, you can
+
use the <a href="mod/mod_alias.html#aliasmatch">AliasMatch</a> and <a
href="mod/mod_alias.html#scriptaliasmatch">ScriptAliasMatch</a>
-directives
can do powerful <a
+directives
to do powerful <a
href="misc/FAQ.html#regex">regular-expression</a> based matching and
substitution. For example,</p>
<blockquote><code>http://www.example.com/~user/file.html</code></blockquote>
-<p>For security reasons, it would be inappropriate to give direct
+<p>For security reasons, it is inappropriate to give direct
access to a user's home directory from the web. Therefore, the <a
-href="mod/mod_userdir.html#userdir">UserDir</a> directive is used to
-specify a directory underneath the user's home directory where web
-files will be located. Using the default setting of <code>Userdir
-public_html</code>, the above URL would look for a file at a directory
-like <code>/home/user/public_html/file.html</code> where the
-</code>/home/user/</code> is the user's home directory as specified in
+href="mod/mod_userdir.html#userdir">UserDir</a> directive
+specifies a directory underneath the user's home directory where web
+files are located. Using the default setting of <code>Userdir
+public_html</code>, the above URL maps to a file at a directory
+like <code>/home/user/public_html/file.html</code> where
+<code>/home/user/</code> is the user's home directory as specified in
<code>/etc/passwd</code>.</p>
<p>There are also several other forms of the <code>Userdir</code>
-directive which can be used on systems where <code>/etc/passwd</code>
-cannot be used to find the location of the home directory.</p>
+directive which you can use on systems where <code>/etc/passwd</code>
+does not contain the location of the home directory.</p>
<p>Some people find the "~" symbol (which is often encoded on the web
as <code>%7e</code>) to be awkward and prefer to use an alternate
href="mod/mod_alias.html#aliasmatch">AliasMatch</a> directive to
achieve the desired effect. For example, to make
<code>http://www.example.com/upages/user/file.html</code> map to
-<code>/home/user/public_html/file.html</code>, the following
-<code>AliasMatch</code> directive can be used.</p>
+<code>/home/user/public_html/file.html</code>, use the following
+<code>AliasMatch</code> directive:</p>
<blockquote><code>
AliasMatch ^/upages/([^/]*)/?(.*) /home/$1/public_html/$2
<h2><a name="redirect">URL Redirection</a></h2>
-<p>The configuration directives discussed in the above sections are
-used to tell Apache to get content from a specific place in the
-filesystem and return it to the client. Sometimes, it is desirable
-instead to inform the client that the content being requested is
-located at an different URL, and instruct the client to make a new
-request with the new URL. This is referred to as <em>redirection</em>
-and is implemented by the <a
-href="mod/mod_alias.html#redirect">Redirect</a> directive. For example,
-if the contents of the directory <code>/foo/</code> under the
-<code>DocumentRoot</code> have been moved to the new directory
-<code>/bar/</code>, clients can instructed to request the content at
-the new location as follows.</p>
+<p>The configuration directives discussed in the above sections tell
+Apache to get content from a specific place in the filesystem and
+return it to the client. Sometimes, it is desirable instead to inform
+the client that the requested content is located at a different
+URL, and instruct the client to make a new request with the new URL.
+This is called <em>redirection</em> and is implemented by the
+<a href="mod/mod_alias.html#redirect">Redirect</a> directive. For
+example, if the contents of the directory <code>/foo/</code> under the
+<code>DocumentRoot</code> are moved to the new directory
+<code>/bar/</code>, you can instruct clients to request the content at
+the new location as follows:</p>
<blockquote><code>Redirect permanent
/foo/ http://www.example.com/bar/</code></blockquote>
<p>This will redirect any URL-Path starting in <code>/foo/</code> to
the same URL path on the <code>www.example.com</code> server with
-<code>/bar/</code> substituted for <code>/foo/</code>. Note that
-clients can be redirected to any server, not only the origin
-server.</p>
+<code>/bar/</code> substituted for <code>/foo/</code>. You can
+redirect clients to any server, not only the origin server.</p>
<p>Apache also provides a <a
href="mod/mod_alias.html#redirectmatch">RedirectMatch</a> directive
-which can be used for more complicated rewriting problems. For
-example, to redirect requests for the site home page to a different
-site, but leave all other requests alone, the following configuration
-can be used.</p>
+for more complicated rewriting problems. For example, to redirect
+requests for the site home page to a different site, but leave all
+other requests alone, use the following configuration:</p>
<blockquote><code>
RedirectMatch permanent ^/$ http://www.example.com/startpage.html
</code></blockquote>
<p>Alternatively, to temporarily redirect all pages on a site to one
-particular page, the following configuration is useful.</p>
+particular page, use the following:</p>
<blockquote><code>
RedirectMatch temp .* http://www.example.com/startpage.html
<p>When even more powerful substitution is required, the rewriting
engine provided by <a href="mod/mod_rewrite.html">mod_rewrite</a> can
-be useful. The directives provided by this module can use
+be useful. The directives provided by this module use
characteristics of the request such as browser type or source IP
address in deciding from where to serve content. In addition,
mod_rewrite can use external database files or programs to determine
<p>Another common cause of "File Not Found" errors is accidental
mistyping of URLs, either directly in the browser, or in HTML links.
-Apache provides the module <a href="mod/mod_speling">mod_speling</a>
+Apache provides the module <a href="mod/mod_speling.html">mod_speling</a>
(sic) to help with this problem. When this module is activated, it
will intercept "File Not Found" errors and look for a resource with a
similar filename. If one such file is found, mod_speling will send an
be presented to the client.</p>
<p>An especially useful feature of mod_speling, is that it will
-compare filenames without respect to case. This can be useful for
-systems where users are unaware of the case-sensitive nature of URLs
-and the unix filesystem. However, using mod_speling for anything more
-than the occasional URL correction can lead to additional load on the
-server, since each "incorrect" request is followed by a URL
-redirection and a new request from the client.</p>
+compare filenames without respect to case. This can help systems
+where users are unaware of the case-sensitive nature of URLs and the
+unix filesystem. But using mod_speling for anything more than the
+occasional URL correction can place additional load on the server,
+since each "incorrect" request is followed by a URL redirection and a
+new request from the client.</p>
<p>If all attempts to locate the content fail, Apache returns an error
page with HTTP status code 404 (file not found). The appearance of
<!--#include virtual="header.html" -->
<h1 align="center">Mapping URLs to Filesystem Locations</h1>
-<p>This document explains the method in which Apache determines
-what filesystem location to serve a file from based on the
-URL of a request.</p>
+<p>This document explains how Apache determines the filesystem
+location from which to serve a file using the URL of a request.</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="#documentroot">DocumentRoot</a></li>
<p>In deciding what file to serve for a given request, Apache's
default behavior is to take the URL-Path for the request (the part of
-the URL following the first single slash) and add it to the end of the
+the URL following the hostname and port) and add it to the end of the
<a href="mod/core.html#documentroot">DocumentRoot</a> specified in
your configuration files. Therefore, the files and directories
underneath the <code>DocumentRoot</code> make up the basic document
<h2><a name="outside">Files Outside the DocumentRoot</a></h2>
<p>There are frequently circumstances where it is necessary to allow
-web access to parts of the filesystem which are not strictly
-underneath the <a href="mod/core.html#documentroot">DocumentRoot</a>.
-Apache offers several different ways to accomplish this. On Unix
-systems, symbolic links can be used to bring other parts of the
-filesystem under the <code>DocumentRoot</code>. For security reasons,
-symbolic links will only be followed if the <a
-href="mod/core.html#options">Options</a> setting for the relevant
-directory includes <code>FollowSymLinks</code> or
-<code>SymLinksIfOwnerMatch</code>.</p>
+web access to parts of the filesystem that are not strictly underneath
+the <a href="mod/core.html#documentroot">DocumentRoot</a>. Apache
+offers several different ways to accomplish this. On Unix systems,
+symbolic links can bring other parts of the filesystem under the
+<code>DocumentRoot</code>. For security reasons, Apache will follow
+symbolic links only if the <a href="mod/core.html#options">Options</a>
+setting for the relevant directory includes
+<code>FollowSymLinks</code> or <code>SymLinksIfOwnerMatch</code>.</p>
<p>Alternatively, the <a href="mod/mod_alias.html#alias">Alias</a>
-directive can be used to map any part of the filesystem into the web
+directive will map any part of the filesystem into the web
space. For example, with</p>
<blockquote><code>Alias /docs /var/web/
-</blockquote></code>
+</code></blockquote>
<p>the URL <code>http://www.example.com/docs/dir/file.html</code> will
be served from <code>/var/web/dir/file.html</code>. The <a
the same way, with the additional effect that all content located at
the target path is treated as CGI scripts.</p>
-<p>For situations where additional flexibility is required, the <a
-href="mod/mod_alias.html#aliasmatch">AliasMatch</a> and <a
+<p>For situations where you require additional flexibility, you can
+
use the <a href="mod/mod_alias.html#aliasmatch">AliasMatch</a> and <a
href="mod/mod_alias.html#scriptaliasmatch">ScriptAliasMatch</a>
-directives
can do powerful <a
+directives
to do powerful <a
href="misc/FAQ.html#regex">regular-expression</a> based matching and
substitution. For example,</p>
<blockquote><code>http://www.example.com/~user/file.html</code></blockquote>
-<p>For security reasons, it would be inappropriate to give direct
+<p>For security reasons, it is inappropriate to give direct
access to a user's home directory from the web. Therefore, the <a
-href="mod/mod_userdir.html#userdir">UserDir</a> directive is used to
-specify a directory underneath the user's home directory where web
-files will be located. Using the default setting of <code>Userdir
-public_html</code>, the above URL would look for a file at a directory
-like <code>/home/user/public_html/file.html</code> where the
-</code>/home/user/</code> is the user's home directory as specified in
+href="mod/mod_userdir.html#userdir">UserDir</a> directive
+specifies a directory underneath the user's home directory where web
+files are located. Using the default setting of <code>Userdir
+public_html</code>, the above URL maps to a file at a directory
+like <code>/home/user/public_html/file.html</code> where
+<code>/home/user/</code> is the user's home directory as specified in
<code>/etc/passwd</code>.</p>
<p>There are also several other forms of the <code>Userdir</code>
-directive which can be used on systems where <code>/etc/passwd</code>
-cannot be used to find the location of the home directory.</p>
+directive which you can use on systems where <code>/etc/passwd</code>
+does not contain the location of the home directory.</p>
<p>Some people find the "~" symbol (which is often encoded on the web
as <code>%7e</code>) to be awkward and prefer to use an alternate
href="mod/mod_alias.html#aliasmatch">AliasMatch</a> directive to
achieve the desired effect. For example, to make
<code>http://www.example.com/upages/user/file.html</code> map to
-<code>/home/user/public_html/file.html</code>, the following
-<code>AliasMatch</code> directive can be used.</p>
+<code>/home/user/public_html/file.html</code>, use the following
+<code>AliasMatch</code> directive:</p>
<blockquote><code>
AliasMatch ^/upages/([^/]*)/?(.*) /home/$1/public_html/$2
<h2><a name="redirect">URL Redirection</a></h2>
-<p>The configuration directives discussed in the above sections are
-used to tell Apache to get content from a specific place in the
-filesystem and return it to the client. Sometimes, it is desirable
-instead to inform the client that the content being requested is
-located at an different URL, and instruct the client to make a new
-request with the new URL. This is referred to as <em>redirection</em>
-and is implemented by the <a
-href="mod/mod_alias.html#redirect">Redirect</a> directive. For example,
-if the contents of the directory <code>/foo/</code> under the
-<code>DocumentRoot</code> have been moved to the new directory
-<code>/bar/</code>, clients can instructed to request the content at
-the new location as follows.</p>
+<p>The configuration directives discussed in the above sections tell
+Apache to get content from a specific place in the filesystem and
+return it to the client. Sometimes, it is desirable instead to inform
+the client that the requested content is located at a different
+URL, and instruct the client to make a new request with the new URL.
+This is called <em>redirection</em> and is implemented by the
+<a href="mod/mod_alias.html#redirect">Redirect</a> directive. For
+example, if the contents of the directory <code>/foo/</code> under the
+<code>DocumentRoot</code> are moved to the new directory
+<code>/bar/</code>, you can instruct clients to request the content at
+the new location as follows:</p>
<blockquote><code>Redirect permanent
/foo/ http://www.example.com/bar/</code></blockquote>
<p>This will redirect any URL-Path starting in <code>/foo/</code> to
the same URL path on the <code>www.example.com</code> server with
-<code>/bar/</code> substituted for <code>/foo/</code>. Note that
-clients can be redirected to any server, not only the origin
-server.</p>
+<code>/bar/</code> substituted for <code>/foo/</code>. You can
+redirect clients to any server, not only the origin server.</p>
<p>Apache also provides a <a
href="mod/mod_alias.html#redirectmatch">RedirectMatch</a> directive
-which can be used for more complicated rewriting problems. For
-example, to redirect requests for the site home page to a different
-site, but leave all other requests alone, the following configuration
-can be used.</p>
+for more complicated rewriting problems. For example, to redirect
+requests for the site home page to a different site, but leave all
+other requests alone, use the following configuration:</p>
<blockquote><code>
RedirectMatch permanent ^/$ http://www.example.com/startpage.html
</code></blockquote>
<p>Alternatively, to temporarily redirect all pages on a site to one
-particular page, the following configuration is useful.</p>
+particular page, use the following:</p>
<blockquote><code>
RedirectMatch temp .* http://www.example.com/startpage.html
<p>When even more powerful substitution is required, the rewriting
engine provided by <a href="mod/mod_rewrite.html">mod_rewrite</a> can
-be useful. The directives provided by this module can use
+be useful. The directives provided by this module use
characteristics of the request such as browser type or source IP
address in deciding from where to serve content. In addition,
mod_rewrite can use external database files or programs to determine
<p>Another common cause of "File Not Found" errors is accidental
mistyping of URLs, either directly in the browser, or in HTML links.
-Apache provides the module <a href="mod/mod_speling">mod_speling</a>
+Apache provides the module <a href="mod/mod_speling.html">mod_speling</a>
(sic) to help with this problem. When this module is activated, it
will intercept "File Not Found" errors and look for a resource with a
similar filename. If one such file is found, mod_speling will send an
be presented to the client.</p>
<p>An especially useful feature of mod_speling, is that it will
-compare filenames without respect to case. This can be useful for
-systems where users are unaware of the case-sensitive nature of URLs
-and the unix filesystem. However, using mod_speling for anything more
-than the occasional URL correction can lead to additional load on the
-server, since each "incorrect" request is followed by a URL
-redirection and a new request from the client.</p>
+compare filenames without respect to case. This can help systems
+where users are unaware of the case-sensitive nature of URLs and the
+unix filesystem. But using mod_speling for anything more than the
+occasional URL correction can place additional load on the server,
+since each "incorrect" request is followed by a URL redirection and a
+new request from the client.</p>
<p>If all attempts to locate the content fail, Apache returns an error
page with HTTP status code 404 (file not found). The appearance of
projects / apache / commitdiff