Please forgive the very confused beginner

[misstracy]

I apologize in advance for what probably is a ridiculous question to all of you!

I have recently been learning CSS and HTML by using Chris’ wonderful screencasts and getting pretty good at it, but now that I am attempting to actually get a site up and going I seem to be stuck. I have poured over google looking for the answers to my questions, but no luck. Perhaps they are so obvious that they are assumed common sense? I’m not sure, but I though perhaps someone on these forums might be kind enough to assist me with some basics.

Basically: I have my domain name set up on Media Temple Grid Service. When I logged into the site, the first confusing thing that I noticed was a lot of folders already there…
.
..
containers
data
domains
cgi-bin
html
etc
logs
stats
users

I would love it if someone could explain the function of those folders to me. Am I suppose to leave them as is? Is there a tutorial somewhere that explains them?

My next major frustration is attempting to actually publish sites that I have coded. I am using Coda. I have a folder on my computer with all the html and css files. However, even when I seem to get a connection to my web server and select ‘publish all’ …. nothing happens. When I try to pull up my website on Safari it still says "403 Forbidden"

I am also very confused because Coda says that in order to publish, the hierarchy of folders on my local root and remote root need to be the same. Does this mean I should delete the folders that were already on Media Temple to begin with (the ones listed about) so my local and remote can match?
…Or is there a specific folder that I am in the dark about which I load my files into and they magically get published?
It seems like many people have a ‘public’ folder, but I have no idea if I just can’t find it or need to create it (in which case, I would have no idea where to put it).

Absolutely any tips, suggestions, or help with any of the issues above is appreciated. Or even just pointing in the direction of a tutorial or article! Thank you so much for helping me learn, I am sorry if I am just missing something obvious here.

[Chris Coyier]

The important one there is "domains". That’s where the sites you have set up in your Media Temple admin are. Within there, you open up the html folder and that’s where you put files you want to be live for that domain. You don’t really need to "publish" them, you just upload them to that location and they’ll be live.

[misstracy]

Thanks Chris!

So what do I do with the ‘.’ and ‘.." files that are in the html folder? What are they, exactly?

[Indubitable Turtle]

Those are not actually files at all, in fact. They are rather links to the next level up in the directory structure.

[Matt]

"Indubitable Turtle" wrote:

Those are not actually files at all, in fact. They are rather links to the next level up in the directory structure.

Aye, "." is a symbolic link in POSIX systems that describes the current directory while ".." is a symbolic that describes the directory structure of its parent/directory just before it.

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