 Preventing Directory Listing
Do you have a directory full of images or zips that you do not want people
to be able to browse through? Typically a server is setup to prevent
directory listing, but sometimes they are not. If not, become
self-sufficient and fix it yourself:
IndexIgnore *
The * is a wildcard that matches all files, so if you stick that line
into an htaccess file in your images directory, nothing in that directory
will be allowed to be listed.
On the other hand, what if you did want the directory contents to be
listed, but only if they were HTML pages and not images? Simple says I:
IndexIgnore *.gif *.jpg
This would return a list of all files not ending in
.jpg or .gif, but would still list .txt, .html, etc.
And conversely, if your server is setup to prevent directory listing,
but you want to list the directories by default, you could simply throw
this into an htaccess file the directory you want displayed:
Options +Indexes
If you do use this option, be very careful that you do not put any
unintentional or compromising files in this directory. And if you guessed
it by the plus sign before Indexes, you can throw in a minus sign (Options
-Indexes) to prevent directory listing entirely--this is typical
of most server setups and is usually configured elsewhere in the apache
server, but can be overridden through htaccess.
If you really want to be tricky, using the +Indexes option, you can
include a default description for the directory listing that is displayed
when you use it by placing a file called HEADER in the
same directory. The contents of this file will be printed out before the
list of directory contents is listed. You can also specify a footer,
though it is called README, by placing it in the same
directory as the HEADER. The README file is printed out after the
directory listing is printed.
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