My web development experience has started with Fedora and RHEL but I'm transitioning to Ubuntu. In Fedora/RHEL, the default seems to be using the /var folder while Ubuntu uses /srv.

Is there any reason to use one over the other and where does the line split? (It confused me so much that until very recently, I thought /srv was /svr for server/service)

My main concern deals with two types of folders

• default www and ftp directories
• specific application folders like:
  1. samba shares (possibly grouped under a smb folder)
  2. web applications (should these go in www folder, or do can I do a symlink to its own directory like "_/www/wordpress" -> "/srv/wordpress")

I'm looking for best practice, industry standards, and qualitative reasons for which approach is best (or at least why its favored).