httpdocs and httpsdocs folders

Question

In the default directory of my hosting server I can see 2 folders among others:

httpdocs

and

httpsdocs

Is this a common directory structure ? If I add stuff to httpsdocs it is automatically protected by SSL ?

thanks

Answer 1

Yes it's a common structure.

httpdocs is the folder used by web server when you type http://yourdomain.com in the browser. Content is not encrypted.

httpsdocs is the folder used by web server when you type https://yourdomain.com in the browser. (SSL). Everything you put there will be encrypted using SSL. Check with your hosting company that you have a valid certificate.

If you want your content in the httpdocs folder to be the same for your https URL, you can ask your hosting company to configure that for you.

Answer 2

I think some PHP control panel utilities use this directory structure, Plesk is the one that I have seen use this. The framework automatically routes all https:// requests to files located in the httpsdocs directory and all http:// requests to the httpdocs directory.

So with one of these frameworks you can be assured that any pages loaded from httpsdocs will have come through an https:// request and will be SSL encrypted.