Difference between www and public_html

Many small business website owners manage their websites themselves, and if you've spent any time on a web server, even with any of the easy-to-use administration utilities like cPanel, you'll know that much of the functionality isn't exactly self explanatory.

A client I'm working with currently asked what the difference was between the /www/ and the /public_html/ folders on her web server. The answer to that is nothing at all.

The /www/ folder was setup initially because people didn't know what /public_html/ was and, when searching for a place to save website files, /www/ was more of an intuitive choice. In reality, the /www/ folder is nothing more than a shortcut to the /public_html/ folder. You can change, add, and remove files from the /www/ folder and everything will be reflected in the /public_html/ folder, and vice versa.