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Before You Announce Your Website To The World...

by Michael Franklin
11 replies
...Please make sure that your root directory is working right!

I like to check out others' websites. So if I come across:

www.samplesite.com/blog

Out of curiosity, I am going to check out:

www.samplesite.com

and yet in many cases, the index.html or default.html is not even set up at all....So now what happens is that I get the index directory of the entire site.

So far I've seen this three times today!

Please make sure that if you don't want anything in your root directory, then just set up a redirect....Otherwise, you are giving away the entire content of your website.
#announce #website #world
  • Profile picture of the author dvduval
    Makes sense, and that way any pagerank from the homepage will also go to your primary page (in this case a blog). We do this on our main site.
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    It is okay to contact me! I have been developing software since 1999, creating many popular products like phpLD.
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  • Profile picture of the author Pieter
    I'm in the process of making my own website any tips on a hosting company I can contact
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    • Profile picture of the author Michael Franklin
      Originally Posted by Pieter View Post

      I'm in the process of making my own website any tips on a hosting company I can contact
      You can't go wrong with either Hostmonster or Hostgator
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    • Profile picture of the author yonaswedo
      Originally Posted by Pieter View Post

      I'm in the process of making my own website any tips on a hosting company I can contact
      Find a honest web hosting review site before decide to choose hosting company. You'll find many information from the real user experience during use the service. The big name web hosting company isn't guarantee.
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  • Profile picture of the author Michael Taylor
    Also, don't forget to hide your images directory. Either turn off directory browsing in .htaccess, or simply make a blank index.html page for the directory.

    And while we're at it, don't forget to protect your .htaccess file. I've been able to peek at some pretty interesting redirects and other info by easily downloading this file.
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    • Profile picture of the author TheRichJerksNet
      This is why you get a Proper Host to begin with .... For those that do not have a proper host or you create a special .htaccess file, add the below.

      .htaccess
      Code:
      <Limit GET POST>
order deny,allow
deny from all
allow from all
</Limit>
<Limit PUT DELETE>
order deny,allow
deny from all
</Limit>
      To protect your directories you can add the following to your .htaccess file

      Code:
      ## Add the following line to the beginning of your .htaccess
Options All -Indexes
## This will turn off indexes so your site won't reveal 
contents directories that don't have an index file.
      Although you added the above to your .htaccess file it is also a good idea that in each directory that you have such as /images/ that you do not want to be open or indexed you can also add a blank index.html file and add a robots.txt file, the robots.txt file should have the following

      Code:
      User-agent: *

Disallow: *
      You should be protecting everyone of your directories not just the main...

      James
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  • Profile picture of the author hardwaresyndrome
    Thanks for sharing these information.
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    • Profile picture of the author Zack Lim
      Hi James,

      Thank you for sharing the code.

      It sure save alot of people's time to look for the code

      Zack
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      • Profile picture of the author eCovers4uGfx
        G'day James,

        Cheers for the heads up on the htaccess codes mate,
        Never knew of doing it that way, just goes to show a
        visit to WF is always going to show their rewards!
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  • Profile picture of the author TheRichJerksNet
    Your welcome guys.. If you are on hostgator your .htaccess should already show forbidden access but hey better safe than sorry, why not add the code anyways..

    As far as directories many many people always forget this.. Also note something I did not add above your .htaccess files is only set to go so deep, normally by default it is 2 or 3 levels deep. Check with your host to be sure.

    Basically what this means is if your .htaccess is only set for 2 levels deep and lets say you have a chat script or something installed which normally uses many folders within folders. This means anything outside of that 2 folders deep the .htaccess will not function (unless you add another .htaccess file)

    For example
    public_html/mychat/themes/theme1/

    In this example the folder theme1 would not be protected under the .htaccess so you would either add another one or just add the blank index.html file to block access to the folder...

    Make sure you check and get all your folders and include that robots.txt file, many hackers have been known to get access to systems due to no robots.txt file and a search engine would index the files. Some scripts (especially many open source) is famouse for leaving these files out. Such as the TinyMCE editor many use for content controls, this script has many many many folders within folders and none of them by default are protected. So it may be a pain to add those files to all those folders but in the long run well worth it...

    James
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    • Profile picture of the author paradox_qu
      @TheRichJerksNet I didn't know that .htaccess only went so deep. Thanks for the good info.
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