Symbolic links are grounded solidly in the *NIX world; they have no true counterpart in the world of Windows. Symbolic links (also called "symlinks") allow a file to appear as though it resides in more than one location. Applying a symlink to a file doesn't actually change the location of the file, but creates a symbolic link from the original file to an alternate location. The key point to understand with symbolic links is that if you edit the link, you're actually editing the original file.

Symbolic links are fraught with security dangers when used within a Web server's DocumentRoot filesystem.

Apache provides two directives to control how the server handles symbolic links: FollowSymLinks and FollowSymLinksIfOwnerMatch. The first allows Apache to follow a symlink to the real file or directory (dangerous!); the second option instructs Apache to follow a symlink if and only if the user ID that owns the link is the same as the user ID that owns the actual file.