This is incorrect. At least in the case of Apache and standard Drupal rewrite rules. Drupal doesn't look through directories for files to be served, Apache does, as it is the web server, Drupal is just the application running on top of it. All Drupal pages are served by accessing index.php, either directly in the form of example.com/ index.php?q=node/12 or through an Apache rewrite rule that redirects requests such as example.com/node/12 to the former address. The way that the rewrites work, is that when a request to a file such as example.com/node/12 comes in, apache tries to find that file, if there is a directory called node, and a file in it called 12, then Drupal will never be bootstrapped, because Apaches rewrites files that it can't find, to Drupal. This is how the static files of Drupal are able to be served up.

In short if you type in a URL to an existing file, Apache (or whatever webserver you are using) should serve it without bootstrapping Drupal. If it can't find that file, it will ask Drupal to bootstrap and return the corresponding content. If Drupal doesn't know a page at the request path, then it will return a 404.

So if you put static html throughout your Drupal directory, yes it will work, and the files will be served.

One heads up before you start this, is that by default directory listing is disabled in .htaccess, and the only index handler enabled is index.php. If you want to send your users to example.com/some/ static/directory/content/here/ and have the index.html, or index.htm file served automatically, then you will need to add that to the index handler section of your .htaccess.

-Mike

On May 17, 2008, at 12:19 PM, Cog Rusty wrote:

I don't fully understand how you want it to work, but when Drupal looks at sites/sitename it only expects to find a settings.php file containing a database url. It will serve no site files from there.

__________________ Michael Prasuhn mike@mikeyp.net http://mikeyp.net 503.488.5433 714.356.0168 cell 949.200.7670 fax