cpanel - Files in public_html are not shown via the web server

Question

I'm trying to configure a server using WHM and cpanel in a vps. WHM came pre-configured, and I had to add a new cpanel account. Even though I had to enter the domain for the cpanel account, I still haven't configured the new domain, so I'm accessing the server using it's IP.

I copied my site files to *~/public_html/site* but when I try to access *http://server_ip/site* in the browser, I get error 404. I also noticed that index.html is taken from /usr/local/apache/htdocs/ so I tried to copy my folder there. Then, the webserver returns error 500, but anyway I believe that copying the content to this folder is not the real solution.

The folder and most of the files are with 755 permission.

The logs in /var/log/httpd/ are empty. The only logs with info are the ones on /usr/local/apache/logs/ but I couldn't see anything useful there.

I'm almost a total newbie with cpanel, so bear in mind that my problem might have a trivial solution.

Extra info:

The error 500 is, according to the logs:

[Mon Jul 11 09:42:42 2011] [error] [client xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx] SoftException in Application.cpp:422: Mismatch between target UID (99) and UID (48) of file "/usr/local/apache/htdocs/site/index.php"
[Mon Jul 11 09:42:42 2011] [error] [client xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx] Premature end of script headers: index.php
[Mon Jul 11 09:42:42 2011] [error] [client xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx] File does not exist: /usr/local/apache/htdocs/site/sys_cpanel, referer: http://69.10.153.132/site/

Answer 1

If you enter the server's IP in a cPanel installation, it serves files for its interface OR the main domain if you have configured one.

If you want to access your account without a domain name, you have to enable first the userdir feature, then you can access it with http://SERVER_IP/~USERNAME/site, where USERNAME it's the cPanel account you just created.