Below is a list of standard cPanel hosting directories.
login - Your login from cPanel.
/home/login/ is your home directory. Your files are stored in this directory. Files placed directly in this directory will not be visible on the Internet. When connecting using FTP, Web Disk, or File Manager, work starts in the home directory.
/home/login/public_ftp/ - This directory is used for anonymous FTP access. Any file in this directory can be downloaded by any user if anonymous FTP access is enabled.
/home/login/public_html/ (www) - The public_html directory contains files for your website. Files in the public_html directory and all its subdirectories will be viewable by all Internet users (/home/login/www/ is a symbolic link to the /home/login/public_html/ directory).
When viewing a site access, users see the index page for that directory. If the user does not specify a specific page in the URL, the first file found will be shown below:
index.html.var
index.htm
index.html
index.shtml
index.xhtml
index.wml
index.perl
index.pl
index.plx
index.ppl
index.cgi
index.jsp
index.js
index.jp
index.php
index.phtml
default.htm
default.html
home.htm
index.php
Default.html
Default.htm
home.html
When adding files to a site, it's important to put them in the right place. For example, files that are to be accessed over the Internet should be placed in the public_html directory or its subdirectories.
/home/login/public_html/cgi-bin - directory for placing your own CGI scripts.
/etc is a service part of your domain's system settings. We strongly recommend that you do not make changes to the contents of this directory.
/mail – service part of the mail server. We strongly recommend that you do not manually change the contents of this directory.
/tmp is a system directory for storing temporary files. We strongly recommend that you do not change the contents of this directory and others that begin with a dot.
