.htaccess : Groovy things to do with .htaccess..

So far we've only scratched the surface. Aside from authorisation, the humble .htaccess file can be put to all kinds of uses. If you've ever had a look in my public archives you will have noticed that that the directories are fully browsable, just like in the old days before adult web hosts realized how to turn that feature off! A line like this..

bring back the directories!
Options +Indexes +MultiViews +FollowSymlinks


..will almost certainly turn it back on again. And if you have mod_autoindex.c installed on your server (probably, yes), you can get nice fancy indexing, too..

show me those files!

IndexOptions FancyIndexing



..which, as well as being neater, allows users to click the titles and, for instance, order the listing by date, or file size, or whatever. It's all for free too, built-in to the server, we're just switching it on. You can control certain parameters too..

let's go all the way!

IndexOptions FancyIndexing IconHeight=16 IconWidth=16



Other parameters you could add include..

NameWidth=30
DescriptionWidth=30
IconsAreLinks SuppressHTMLPreamble (handy!)


I'm not mentioning the "XHTML" parameter in Apache2, because it still isn't! Anyways, I've chucked one of my old fancy indexing .htaccess file onsite for you to have some fun with. Just add readme.html and away you go! note: these days I use a single header files for all the indexes..

HeaderName /inc/header.html


.. and only drop in local "readme" files. Check out the example, and my public archives for more details.