7.1 Mapping resources

In the basic configuration for each of the servers (discussed in Chapter 5), I described how to specify the document root for each server. (In Apache, that's a DocumentRoot directive; in the other servers, it's a PASS mapping rule, which specifies how /* is interpreted.)

If you just want to serve everything from one document tree, with a URL that exactly matches the subdirectory structure of that document tree and do nothing else, then you may not need to use other mapping rules at all. This is unlikely for any Web site of significant size. In a larger site Webmasters find themselves mapping short URLs rather than long paths, making CGI programs look like HTML files and redirecting requests for documents that have moved to other servers.

In general, on the inside you want to map URLs into file specifications (or sometimes into other URLs). The easiest way is to point "/" at the top of a directory tree and map URLs to file names according to the file-system mapping, but very often you want to do more than that.

The cleanest, most efficient, easiest-to-maintain layout for your file structure may not produce the cleanest layout for URLs, which can get very long very quickly. You can provide easier access and hide your internal structures, which makes life easier for anybody who has to type in a URL and also makes it possible to reorganize your internal structures without disturbing customer bookmarks.

If you're multihosting (see Chapter...