Add the code to your .htaccess file

To block access to browsing files on directories you can simply add the code below to your .htaccess file:

IndexIgnore *

That’s all! Then if people enter the url of a directory on your website it will no longer list the files in that directory.

Don’t know how to set-up a .htaccess file? Click here

Add the code to the .htaccess file

To redirect visitors from the www.-less domain we add the following code to our .htaccess file:

Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{http_host} ^yourdomain.com [nc]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.yourdomain.com/$1 [r=301,nc]

Make sure you replace yourdomain.com with your domain. This is all you need to do! Easy!

About .htaccess files

.htaccess files have a number of uses, from changing apache set-ups to editing php settings. It’s quite useful however it can be a fiddly process. The reason the files start with a “.” instead of having the normal format is because they typically are hidden files. Linux and Mac OS X typically treat these files as hidden. If you edit locally this can cause problems if you haven’t set your computer to show hidden files. Programs such as Coda allow you to show/edit these hidden files inside it’s file browser.

I recently had a series of my sites hacked with .htaccess files that added a series of porn links to my site in the source code (the sites remained as were). It’s a really tricky thing to discover as they were old sites that I don’t commonly edit so it wasn’t until it was pointed out to me that I found it out. So if you have a similar hack done to one of your sites delete the .htaccess file!

Setting up a .htaccess file

Easy, just create a file called .htaccess in your favourite text editor. Save it to the root directory of your domain (or the directory you wish the actions to occur). If it doesn’t work, make sure your server has .htaccess scripting allowed.

I’ve got a lot more .htaccess tips to share so keep a look out.