Best Practice

Generally, it is good practice to remove any unused web applications out of ${tomcat_home}/webapps.

Tomcat Web Applications That Come With Tomcat

Tomcat “ships” with several default web applications you may want to consider removing if they are not being utilized:

  • The ROOT application is Tomcat’s DocumentRoot and contains the server’s main web page. Give thought to the content that is placed in ROOT/, as it will be readily available. Note: if you want to utilize a robots.txt file to restrict crawler activity, ROOT/ is the place it will go.
  • The manager application is used for remote management of web applications. To use this application, you must add a user with role of manager-gui in tomcat-users.xml. Obviously, if you are not planning to use the Manager application, it should be removed.
  • The host-manager application is used for management of virtual hosts. To use this application, you must add a user with role of admin-gui in tomcat-users.xml. If you are not planning to do a lot of virtual hosting in Tomcat this application should be removed.
  • The examples application should probably be removed from a production server to minimize security exposure.
  • The docs are a copy of the Online tomcat documentation. Unless you have need for a local copy, removing docs would help to tidy-up ${tomcat_home}/webapps.