How would you feel if someone could view the contents of all your directories which do not contain an index.html, index.php, or other index file? Personally, I feel like my privacy has been invaded. Time to shed some light.
How’s your setup? Let’s test. From your browser’s address bar, navigate to a directory that you suspect may not contain an index file (an images folder is usually guilty). For WordPress users, try something like http://www.example.com/wp-includes. If you see a list of files, then others can see this too. I don’t like this. Keep reading.
If you host with HostGator or any other host for that matter, I strongly urge you to disable directory browsing. There are a few ways this can be done. You could edit the .htaccess or httpd.conf files but I feel it’s easiest to do this in cPanel.
From your cPanel admin, click on `Index Manager`. Select `public_html` from the list of folders, and on the next screen select `No Indexing`, then click save.
Doing this will keep people from seeing a list of files in your directories. Security is good. Be safe.
This was very helpful! I just switched from GoDaddy to HostGator, and I was wondering how do this… thanks!