Soo confused about where to upload my website files

#1

I am brand new to dreamhost, making websites and hosting and I’m soo confused about where to put my files. I also don’t know how to access the files I upload without using my FTP transfer thingy. (I’m using Fetch). Everytime I want to see what files I have uploaded and where they are I tell the Fetch program to go to the recent connection and there are my files. I’m sure I should be able to find them in the dreamhost panel but I can’t figure it out.

The meat of my question is this: I made a single page website using Dreamweaver and I’m trying to upload those files to dreamhost.
When I connect to my account with Fetch I assume I am in the home directory and in this directory I see a bunch of files (and I don’t know what they mean) and some folders where I think I am supposed to upload my files
The files I see are: .alias / .bash_profile / .bashrc / .cshrc
The folders are: dh / logs / maildir / “mysitename”.com

I think the website files should go in the “mysitename”.com folder and I put them there but it didnt work. I still get an index page and not the website. The confusing thing is that when I try to go to my website and I get the index page there are three files on the index page and these files seem to exist in the dh folder inside my home directory. So should I put my website files in that dh folder or should they go in the “mysitename”.com folder?

I have two domains on my account and one has a wordpress site on it and I am wondering if this “dh” folder is something my friend added when he made the wordpress site and I can delete it from this site or if I shouldn’t delete it or if I should add my website files to this “dh” folder.

The other confusing thing is that for a while this web address was “parked” while I worked in dreamweaver and so inside the “dh” folder along with the three files that show up on my website under the index is another folder named “web” with the same three files and another folder named “parking” with the same three files again. This makes me thing that I shouldn’t delete this folder because dreamhost put it there and that my files should go into this “dh” folder instead of my “mysitename.com” folder.

I’m so confused… did I mention how I don’t really know what I am doing? If anyone can help…I would be so overjoyed!
Thanks. J

#2

Your website files should go to “mysitename.com” directory.

Be default, apache web server will look for index.html or index.php in “mysitename.com” directory. If such file does not exists, it returns a list of files. You may want to check whether your home page is named as above.

I’m not sure about the “park”, “web”, and “parking” directories because I don’t have experience with parked domains in DH. I’ll suggest you to take a look at your domains settings at DH panel --> Domains --> Manage Domains --> Web Hosting --> Edit to make sure your domain is not currently parked.

This article may help you to know DH better.
http://wiki.dreamhost.com/Building_A_Website

$50 off and 3 free domains with code: [color=#CC0000]DH3[/color] Sign Up NOW or More Codes Here

#3

If I understand your question correctly, you are having the same issues I had a month ago when I first started creating my web site. The method is easy once you know how to do it, but I found it VERY difficult to figure out the first time.

  1. Log in to your DreamHost account via panel.dreamhost.com .

  2. Select the “welcome” screen if it isn’t the default.

  3. Look for the giant button in the right hand column that says “users,” and click on it.

  4. Click on the button that says “WebFTP Login” (right side of the page, under “Actions”).

  5. You will be prompted for your FTP username. If you haven’t set one up already, you’ll need to go back to the “Manage Account” function of your DreamHost panel to set one up.

  6. Clicking on WebFTP Login will bring up the net2FTP login screen; log in with your username and password.

  7. Once you’re logged in, you should see your domain directory; click on it.

  8. Click on the “upload” button in the top left row. You will then be able to browse to the directory on your computer where you keep your web site files. Click on each one you want to upload until they’re all listed. Don’t forget the style sheet if you’re using XHTML and CSS.

  9. Here’s the part that is impossible unless you accidentally discover it: Nothing will happen until you click on the green check mark that isn’t anywhere near where you would expect an “action” icon to be.

  10. Clicking on the green check mark, and the one on the next screen, should upload your files.

I also used DreamWeaver to help create my site files, but I gave up trying to use it to upload my files to DreamHost. The built-in WebFTP application works fine for me … now that I’ve done it a dozen times!

Hope this helps.

-Craig

#4

the thing to keep in mind is webftp was written in php therefore it has a upload file size limit. I beleive the file size is around 7MB’s.
Where as normal ftp programs and dreamweaver (using ftp) do not have that issue.
Once you have successfully accessed your site you will find it quite simple using ftp or dreamweaver using ftp. The latter can access sites with other methods which is why I specifically stated ftp.

My website

#5

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Where is the green checkmark? thank you.

#6