I am extremely new at this, so please be kind:)
I have created a site, named my first page index.html and index.htm just to be sure, uploaded the site to my website server/directory(I think that is where I’ve uploaded it) and all that shows up when going to the site is parent directory. How do I make it so it will view as an actual site?
Any help is really appreciated. And if possible, make it so simple even an idiot like me can understand.
Thank you!
Each domain under your account has a web accessable directory with the same name as the domain.
For example, if your domain is called example.com, there will be a directory called example.com in your home directory, this directory is where you need to place your site files.
Mark
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When I first went to the site with an ftp program, it was totally empty. I created a folder mywebsite.com and uploaded the files there. Could I have done something wrong with it? And I used my real website name. Could my user I created not have the permisions or anything?
Hmmm… If your FTP client is logging in to your home directory, you should see quite a few directories, like ‘mail’, ‘logs’ etc. as well as the web accessable directories for any domains that you are ‘fully hosting’.
If you do not see these directories when you log-in, it is possible that you have set the starting directory for your FTP client to the web accessable directory for your domain (the one with the same name as the domain).
If so, then you do not need to create another directory named mywebsite.com, you just place your site files within this initial blank directory, or you could remove this starting directory from your FTP client configuration.
To confirm if this is indeed the case, try logging in using the DreamHost Net2FTP client and examining the directory structure and see where your files were uploaded to.
Mark
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Thank you,
I just logged into the DreamHost Net2FTP client and see that all my files and folders are right here. They are also in a folder called mywebsite.com and one named mywebsite
I seem to have tried a lot of different things. Should I delete them all and try over?
Probably a good idea to delete the mywebsite directory and leave the mywebsite.com directory, assuming the mywebsite.com directory is located in your home directory (the directory you see when you first log-in using Net2FTP).
Mark
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Ok, I’ll give that a shot.
Does having multiple folder mess with things (for images etc.), should I just have everything in the mywebsite.com folder?
No, it doesn’t mess things at all. You can have as many sub-directories within your mywebsite.com directory as you want, you just need to make sure you reference files using the correct path if they are within sub-directories (ie: ‘/images/file.jpg’ )
Also, you should place your index.html file in the root directory for the domain (the one named mywebsite.com). Actually, you can configure things to allow you to place the index file within a sub-directory too, but that is a bit beyond the scope of this post 
Mark
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Ok, thank you very much for your help with this. One last question, for now at least. Because I was trying things so many times, I now have two index files, on htm and one html. Does that also mess with things? Do I need to fix that as well?
No problem, hopefully I have been of some help.
It is probably best for your own organisation to only have one index file. However, Apache, the software that actually serves your site, will look for index.html first, if that doesn’t exist it will look for index.shtml, then index.htm and so on (it actually looks for quite a few possible index files).
Mark
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Thank you for all your help with this, but I’m still having an issue.
I have deleted all the files from ftp://mywebsite.com, now have a folder in their called mywebsite.com, and have uploaded all my files into the folder /mywebsite.com and it still shows up as parent directory when I go to the website. Am I missing something?
Thank you once again for your help with this.
It is possible that your browser is caching an old version of the page, try clearing your browser cache (called temporary Internet files in IE) and loading the page again.
Can you post the domain name? I will try it from here if you like.
Mark
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I tried that and it still shows up. The domain name is www.rangeroutreachcenter.com
Thank you once again for helping out with this.
OK, I too get a blank directory listing when I go to that site. This tells me that the rangeroutreachcenter.com directory in your home directory does not contain an index.html file (or any other files for that matter).
When you log-in to your account using FTP you should see the following directories (or something close to this).
[color=#0000CC]
logs
mail
Maildir
rangeroutreachcenter.com
[/color]
The rangeroutreachcenter.com directory is where you need to place your index.html file.
If this is the domain you registered when you signed-up, the rangeroutreachcenter.com directory should have been created automatically by the DreamHost system. If this is a domain you have registered since signing up, you will need to add the domain as ‘fully hosted’ using the panel (Domains -> Manage Domains -> Add Domain / Sub-Domain)
Mark
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Ok, I see none of that on the site. The only folder is the one I created, rangeroutreachcenter.com.
I originally had this as a redirect site until last night when I changed it to hosted. Could it take a few days?
Thank you once again, this is starting to make some sense.
What do you see if you log-in using the DreamHost Web2FTP client?
You should not have needed to create the rangeroutreachcenter.com directory, that should have been done automatically when you ‘fully hosted’ the domain.
It could, but I would not expect to see the blank directory listing if the domain was still redirected.
One more thing to check, are you logging in as the user that controls the domain? You can check this in the panel at Domains -> Manage Domains. The user controlling the domain will be show in the Web Hosting column.
I just noticed that your site is now returning a “bad_httpd_conf” error. I am not sure what thats about
Anyway, it is getting very late (early) here and I really must get some sleep. If my suggestions so far haven’t worked, I really don’t know what else I can suggest, other than to lodge a support request to DreamHost and see if they can find anything screwy on their end.
Good luck
Mark
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Have a good nights sleep and thank you very much for your help with this. I shall try to open a support log.
Tibi Gratius
Thank you, I did
Be sure to post when you hear back from DreamHost. The problem has me intrigued, especially why you don’t seem to be seeing what you should when you log in via FTP.
Mark
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