directory help

[shanecore]

okay, i've got a directory on my server called "images" where i store all of my images... The problem i'm having is that when someone goes to http://www.muempire.com/images/ in their browser, they can see all the files that i have stored.

I'm not sure if it's a security risk or not, but is there a way I can prevent people from viewing folders such as that?

[Vin DSL]

Make an empty file called index.html and upload it to your directory.

[Vin DSL]

Better yet, make a file called index.php, put this in it:

<?php
header("Location: http://www.muempire.com/")
?>

...then upload it to your directory. This will redirect inquiring minds to your homepage.

[shanecore]

thanks dude!

[Vin DSL]

Heh! PHP to the rescue!

That works pretty good huh?

I think I'm gonna replace all my empty index.html files with that...

EDIT: Um... redirected to my homepage, of course.

[jason]

Another alternative is to put a file called .htaccess in that directory, and in that add the following:

Options -Indexes

This will cause an error page to be displayed that says that the directory listing is denied. Its not a pretty solution (although with a little more .htaccess tweaking you can customize the error page), but it does offer you the benefit of blocking directory access to any subdirectories of that directory without needing additional index.html/index.php files for each one.

Alternatively, put the .htaccess file in your public_html directory and it will protect any directory in your entire site that doesn't have a default index page.

--Jason