How To Change The Default Document on Easy CGI Hosting

In a web hosting context, a default document is the file that will be served by the web server when none have been specified by the web browser. For instance, let’s take the following URL:

http://www.mywebsite.com/contact.html

In this case, I’ve requested the “contact.html” web page from the web server. But what if I had used one of these URL instead:

http://www.mywebsite.com/
or

http://www.mywebsite.com/downloads/

Well in these cases, the web server would’ve served me what is called the “default document”. Here are some examples of the most well-known default documents:

• index.html
• index.htm
• default.asp

Your web server (or hosting account) can abe configured in such a way that there will be more than one default document. In this case, the web server will verify the presence of default documents in the order they have been set by the administrator.

Depending on the web server platform (IIS or Apache HTTPD for instance), there are various ways of setting the default documents but today we’ll look into a specific web host: Easy CGI Hosting.

How To Change The Default Document on Easy CGI

The reason why I chose Easy CGI (review) for this tutorial is because lately I’ve installed WordPress through their InstallCentral. While the installation went without a hitch, the blog wasn’t showing up on my website. Turned out WordPress’ default document is “index.php” and my Easy CGI account wasn’t configured correctly to serve this file by default.

So assuming you’re already logged in your Easy CGI control panel, click on the IIS Administration Console icon:

Next, expand the Default Docs panel to see the current default document settings:

Now simply enter the name of the new default document in the New Filename field and hit the Add button. This will add the filename to the bottom of the list above. If you want this new filename to be the first document your web server will look for, simply select it from the list and click the Move Up button until it reaches the top.

Once you’re done, don’t forget to click the Update button the change the new configuration. And as the note says, the setting changes will take up to 2 hours to take effect.

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Links

• Easy CGI Website
• Easy CGI Reviews
• Windows Web Hosting