[alcat]

I make it a habit to put all my public files in directory such as www/, where as .git and other non public but site-related files/directories are contained above this.

[dan15]

IMO this is the correct approach - Exposing every single file in the repository (including files that don't need to be public) sounds terrible.

[drivebyacct2]

Yes. I mean, even 6 year old PHP articles get this right, don't serve files from the same place your executing code is running from.

public_html has specific connotations for a reason.