Hidden Files on Server

Autogenerated content is hidden

[GGR_Web]

Hi,
I've found an issue with the subsites that our cms produces. Still being new to this (bespoke) system I looked on the remote server to retrieve the relevant files, but I've found that somehow, content generated by this system does not appear.

I can't post the code for a whole cms, so could someone give me some general information as to how a system can operate without generating extra files? Or is this more likely to be hidden file problem? I know how vague this is, but really I'm running out of ideas.

edit: sorry just relised this isn't the right place to put this post. Could Mods please move? Cheers!

[edited by: GGR_Web at 8:48 am (utc) on Oct. 15, 2008]

[g1smd]

Usually the requested URL is rewritten by .htaccess to an index.php file. The rewrite "captures" all URL requests that are not for a physical existing file on the server (such as robots.txt and other such stuff), or captures all URL requests that have .html on the end.

The requested URL is passed to the index.php file and it then analyses that to establish which database record to extract. It then uses the extracted title, meta description and page content and inserts the information into the page template and sends it to the browser.

Sometimes images are also stored in the database, and sometimes they are stored as image files in the images folder; depending on the design of the CMS.

Not sure of this answers your question or not.

[phranque]

just to expand on g1smd's response:
the process described is called an internal rewrite and is typically accomplished with mod_rewrite if it's an apache server or ISAPI_Rewrite if it's IIS.
(if it's apache, look for clues in a hidden file named .htaccess)

regarding server side scripting, in addition to php scripting, it is also possible that your cms uses cgi scripting, so look as well for an index.cgi or other .cgi file that gets rewritten to.
the script may be in a subdirectory.
sometimes cgi scripts are put in a cgi-bin directory.