Support Start > Web Hosting Technical Information > Installing and Configuring Custom Scripts > Home Directory

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Your "home" directory is a private directory that can only be accessed by your own scripts. The home directory can't be accessed by someone visiting your website, and it normally can't be accessed with an FTP program (although you can add an extra FTP account that has access to your home directory if you wish).

The home directory is a different location on the server from your website files directory (the place where your website files are stored). Most customers don't need to use the home directory.

To see the path to your home directory, enter your domain name in the box at the top of this page.

Reasons to use the home directory

Because files in the home directory can't ever be accessed by your website visitors, it's a good place to put files that need to be more secure.

In particular, advanced users may wish to use the home directory to store information that should be kept completely private, such as passwords that might be needed by your script.

As an example, a PHP script could "include" a file from the home directory that contains a password or other sensitive information. Imagine that a file named "password.php", containing these lines, was placed in the home directory:

<?php
$password = 'mypass';
?>

That file could then be used by a normal PHP script that's in your Web directory.

Accessing the home directory by FTP or SSH

You can create an additional FTP account to allow you to put files in the home directory if you wish. Keep in mind that adding a new FTP account with access to the entire home directory allows anyone who knows that password to view email messages, Web logs, and other sensitive files mentioned below.

If you use SSH, SFTP or SCP to connect to our servers, the home directory is the default directory that you're placed in when you first connect.

Other files in the home directory

You may notice other files in your home directory, including:

• A directory named "mailstore" that contains your email messages.
• A directory named "logs" that contains your Web server log files.
• A directory named "php-settings" that contains custom php.ini settings.

Don't delete any files in your home directory unless you created them or you're sure you know what you're doing.

A security warning

Even though your home directory is designed to be private, you should not use it to store valuable information (for example, credit card numbers) in "plain text". If your scripts collect data such as credit card numbers, you should encrypt the data and transfer it to a secure computer, rather than leaving it on any shared public server.