This page allows you to configure document service on your server. This includes letting the server know where to find your documents. For a public server, you definitely do not want to make all the files on your file system available to remote clients. The easiest way make sure this does not happen is to keep all of your server's documents in a central location - known as a document root.
Another benefit of the document root is that you can move your documents to a new directory (perhaps on a different disk) without changing any of your URL's.
For example, let's say your document root is /usr/ns-docs
.
A request arrives from a client for:
http://www.acme.com/products/info.html
. The server will
look for the file as /usr/ns-docs/products/info.html.
Soon after, you purchase a new disk, and decide you want to keep your
server's documents in the directory /gig/ns-docs/
instead.
After changing your document root, the same request will look for the file
as /gig/ns-docs/products/info.html.
You can also elect not to use a document root, although we do not recommend
it. In that case, it would be equivalent to having a document root of
/
.