deployment of web app

[EM...@arnoldlogistics.com]

I am attempting to deploy my first web application.  I have read many 
tutorials and have worked on it for sometime now.  I simply cannot 
understand what is needed to complete the process.  I do not know what 
files need to be modified and placed where.  This is what I have come up 
with so far.  I have a web application called myapp.  Inside is a root 
directory called bluegrass.  Bluegrass holds all my jsp and html pages 
along with a WEB-INF folder.  This WEB-INF folder has three components.  A 
Lib folder, a classes folder, and a web.xml file.  My classes folder holds 
one java class.  I compile this application using ant.  I am left with a 
.WAR file.  I take this .WAR file and place it in the root 
directory(webapps) of Tomcat5.5.  Tomcat then takes the war file and 
distributes to the directory.   I then go to my address line and type in 
the following: http://localhost:8080/manager/deploy?path=/myapp.  When I 
do this I continually receive a Failed: failed to find application at 
context path /myapp.  I then go back to check my file only to see that 
myapp is no longer there.  I am not sure why whole folder keeps 
disappearing.  Does anyone know if I am supposed to modify the manager.xml 
files or maybe create a context.xml file or modify the server.xml file?? 
This is what I am unclear on.  I can give more info if needed. 

Thanks
Ethan