Logic behind ISPConfig site directories

[webbinALLnite]

Hey guys,

Great system! I'm glad there is an open source alternative to the commercial control panels!

I have a question about the logic behind user directories used by ISPConfig. When I create a user, her directory has a "web" directory that is the Document Root. I get the purpose of that. However, the user's directory also has a few other directories. I understand the purpose behind most of them but can't figure out why the "cgi-bin" directory would be outside the document root. Does this mean that CGI (Perl) scripts can only be run from non-web-accessible locations? Is this directory to be accessed some other way? To run Perl scripts is it necessary to create a cgi-bin inside of "web" or can they be run anywhere?

A second question I have is why do users get their own "web" directories? Are they able to have their own sites and if so how does this work exactly? Do they essentially get their own "Site" (aka "Web") or is this somehow a sub-site (sub-directory, sub-domain) of the defined Site?

Again awesome work and thanks in advance for any clarification.

[till]

It is not nescessary that a cgi-bin is inside the web directory, as the directory is configured via a script alias. For security reasons, cgi directories should not be inside the web directory. You can access the cgi files with http://www.yoursite.com/cgi-bin/... as usual.

A second question I have is why do users get their own "web" directories? Are they able to have their own sites and if so how does this work exactly? Do they essentially get their own "Site" (aka "Web") or is this somehow a sub-site (sub-directory, sub-domain) of the defined Site?

This is the user website feature, it is described in the manual. It works with the apache rewrite functions.