I am trying to set up a web server running CentOS 5, and I've already installed the PHP, Apache, and MySQL packages. However the files for the Apache server are installed in /var/www/html, which seems like a strange folder to keep the files in. On an account I have for web hosting elsewhere, whenever I FTP in my default folder is in /home/, so I'm not sure if that is the "normal" place to keep website files when running a server or not, but I'm just curious about it.

FTP is different from web, and they use different config files. The /var/www/html is fairly "normal", for alot of distros, but easily changed. Look for the DocRoot directive in your apache config, and change it to be whatever you'd like, if you want to move things.

NOTE: I *THINK* it's DocRoot...might be DocHome...not in front of my box now.

Have a look in the Linux Standards Base [1]. There are more possibilities to place the www root.

I prefer to place the files in /srv/www/ and link it to /var/www/html. As I also like to place files on a server in the default directory. So another admin has no difficulties to find the files.

[1] http://www.linuxfoundation.org/en/LSB

As TB0ne said it's fairly normal to be here, Since I have a CentOS server I can say it's DocumentRoot and the config can be found at /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf. As already stated FTP is different, it's always possible to create an account that opens on a folder within the DocumentRoot. However myself, I use a folder within home for the purpose of SCP (much safer then FTP) and a couple of small script to copy files to where I generally place uploaded files too.

P.S. I normally back-up httpd.conf before I have to edit it, very easy to break it and apache is likely to complain like crazy if anything is wrong.

Well I have worked with httpd.conf before, as I've worked with Apache on Windows for around 2-3 years now, I just haven't ever used it on Linux so i wasn't sure what the "norm" was for setting up an Apache server, but if the default directories work then I think I'm all set!

As with most things in life...'normal' is a matter of opinion...