Comments on: How to Prevent Directory Listing

By: Ryan

Ryan — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 22:53:35 +0000

IIS has an option in the home directory tab to prevent directory indexing by unchecking the option. Optionally (if you are a little more advanced with .htaccess or are willing to experiment) you can create a rewrite for each directory you don’t want browsed. If you write it correctly, it will only rewrite the root directory and won’t rewrite for access to files within the directory. Why do this? Some people try to find more general info by removing the end of a url. If you create a rewrite to relevant information, they will get a friendly page instead of a 403 error without having to create duplicate content.

By: Gizew

Gizew — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 02:18:35 +0000

Thank you. It is a simple and cleaver tutorial.

By: Brijesh

Brijesh — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 06:01:14 +0000

Hi Doggie,

Thanks a lot it worked well…I just copied the code ( IndexIgnore * ) in my .htaccess file and reuploaded to give a try and it worked well.

Thanks very much for your help. Keep wiriting such good articles…I search for this in many website but couldn’t get appropriate answer. Must say a good article. Thanks once again.

Regards

Brijesh

By: Doogie

Doogie — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 13:26:27 +0000

Hi Brijesh

It sounds like you are deleting the old index.php file before uploading the new one. Do not delete the old file. Just overwrite it and that should block the listing of the directory.

The alternative is to block the directory using the .htaccess file. If you add the line of code I mentioned above to the .htaccess file, it should protect your root directory and all subdirectories.

By: Brijesh

Brijesh — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 12:13:28 +0000

I have a simmilar problem as mention in this article. My problem is i keep updating my index.php file and whenever i do that..in the interim of reuploading my index.php file the directory of the website is listed. pls suggest some method to protect the same.