[Development Guides Home](/guides) >> [Guide to Site Publisher Templates](/guides/guide-to-site-publisher-templates)

# Guide to Site Publisher Templates - The Configuration File

## Introduction

The [*Site Publisher*](https://docs.cpanel.net/cpanel/domains/site-publisher/) feature publishes configuration data with each Site Publisher website's files.

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Warning:

We **strongly** recommend that users do **not** modify configuration files directly. Direct edits to these files may cause problems in cPanel's [*Site Publisher*](https://docs.cpanel.net/cpanel/domains/site-publisher/) interface (*cPanel >> Home >> Domains >> Site Publisher*).

Each Site Publisher website includes a configuration file in the target domain's home directory (document root).

* The system stores configuration data in the /`home/user/site_publisher/configurations/` directory, where `user` represents the cPanel account's username. It saves this file as the `home-user-public_html-example.com.json` file, where `home-user-public_html-example.com` represents the Site Publisher website's target directory, with hyphens (`-`) instead of slashes (`/`).
* cPanel's [*Site Publisher*](https://docs.cpanel.net/cpanel/domains/site-publisher/) interface (*cPanel >> Home >> Domains >> Site Publisher*) uses these files to retrieve information about existing Site Publisher websites.
* This file contains a hash of JSON-formatted parameters and values for the domain's Site Publisher website.


## The configuration file

Each configuration file contains the following parameters:

| Parameter | Type | Description | Possible values | Example |
|  --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| `path` | *string* | The absolute path to the directory that contains the website's template. | `/var/cpanel/customizations/site_templates/` — The root user's templates.`/home/username/var/cpanel/reseller/site_templates/` — A reseller's templates, where username represents the reseller's username.`/usr/local/cpanel/3rdparty/share/site_templates/` — cPanel-provided templates. | `/usr/local/cpanel/3rdparty/share/site_templates` |
| `template` | *string* | The template's name. | The template name. This file uses the name of the template's directory within one of the `site_templates` directories as the template name. | `under_construction` |
| `docroot` | *string* | The domain's home directory. | The absolute path to the directory to which the user published the Site Publisher website. | `/home/username/public_html/example.com` |


## Example

In this example, `description` and `email_address` are **template-specific** values.


```json
{
     "path":"/usr/local/cpanel/etc/site_templates",
     "description":"This is my website. It's coming soon!",
     "template":"under_construction",
     "email_address":"user@example.com",
     "docroot":"/home/username/public_html/example.com"
}
```