I need to access a directory above my documentroot directory. DocumentRoot is /var/www/vhosts/domain.com/httpdocs/www I tried adding the following httpd.conf command in my file: <Directory "/var/www/vhosts/domain.com/httpdocs/content"> Order allow,deny Allow from all </Directory> in the virtual config for domain.com and restarted the web server, but that did not give me access. I can run the below test file from shell and it finds the file and says okay. $id = "12705"; $im = "/var/www/vhosts/domain.com/httpdocs/content/photos/" . $id . "/" . $id . "_100.jpg"; if (file_exists("$im")) { echo "file okay<br>"; } else { echo "nope<br>"; } ?> This does not work and says 'nope' when running via browser but does work when run from the shell. Figure it is simple, but can someone help?