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.
I was looking this question up myself and found your answer to be straight forward and very helpful. Most of the work I have done as a freelance designer working with websites has been fairly basic and usually had public_html as the root for files. A site I’m working on now has all sorts of folders I do not recognize filled with PHP. Anyway, Thanks for the help and I will be sure to come back for more in the near future.
Glad it was helpful Bobby!