Best location of backend scripts

[sennetta]

I have a OO PHP and MySQL powered website, and I've just bought the server space for it.  As I used to bum web-space off friends before now, I was amazed at the amount of stuff one can do when they have their own space...

 

My site works by having one index.php file and including files into it, like this: www.blahh.com/index.php?pg=this

 

Seeing as I can access the directory above the top-level web-accessible dir, it got me thinking that this might be a more appropriate place for my sensitive class files.  I've tested including a test class file and using it to output html to the browser and it seems to work, but I don't know enough about the system to decide whether this is a good idea or whether it will cause problems (maybe with MySQL access??).

 

Basically my question is this: where do you put your back-end files? In the web-accessible public_html dir (obviously setting the permissions), or above that where they DEFINITELY can't be read by the average user?

 

Cheers,

 

Anthony