Magento root directory

Magento root directory (aka Magento root folder) is first and top-most directory in Magento file-tree hierarchy. This folder contains all Magento files and directories. Typically, this is in the same time, the website root directory as well.

Typical contents of Magento 1.x root directory:


In Magento 2.x you’ll see the following files and folders:

# ls -1
CHANGELOG.md
CONTRIBUTING.md
COPYING.txt
Gruntfile.js.sample
ISSUE_TEMPLATE.md
LICENSE.txt
LICENSE_AFL.txt
app
bin
composer.json
composer.lock
dev
index.php
lib
nginx.conf.sample
package.json.sample
php.ini.sample
phpserver
pub
setup
update
var
vendor

You can access Magento root directory and upload any files there via FTP, SSH or Filemanager. For filemanagement over SSH or FTP you can use one of SSH file clients, such as WinSCP or TotalCommander, Doublecommander, Filezilla.

In cPanel, you can access webFileManager and navigate to public_html directory. Other common locations for Magento root folder include:

• public_html (cPanel)
• /var/www/vhosts/[site_name]/httpdocs/ (Plesk)
• /www
• /var/www/
• /home/[your_username]/www
• /home/[your_username]/public_html
• /home/[your_username]/[site_name]/html (siteWorx/Nexcess)
• /srv/

When you need to find out full path from your current location in console/shell you can use pwd command:

 -bash-4.1$ pwd
/var/www/vhosts/example.com/httpdocs

If PHP code, you can print out getcwd() or _SERVER["DOCUMENT_ROOT"] global variable or view it in phpinfo() output, i.e. by uploading getcwd.php file with the following content:

<?php 
echo '<pre>';
echo "\nCurrent working directory is " . getcwd() . "\n";
echo '_SERVER["DOCUMENT_ROOT"] is ';
echo $_SERVER["DOCUMENT_ROOT"];
echo '</pre>';
phpinfo(INFO_VARIABLES);

Unprotected Magento root directory can be discovered with our Magento Vulnerability scanner tool.