Preventing directory listing by redirecting?

Question

I want to use .htaccess to prevent directory listing.
I\'ve got pages within /location/ but I don\'t have an index file. So I want to redirect to <

Answer 1

I know this is an older thread but I just had to implement something similar and did it the following way:

Options -Indexes
ErrorDocument 403 /location/about.php 

Basically, Options -Indexes prevents directory listing and ErrorDocument 403 rewrites the default 403 message.

Answer 2

Changing DirectoryIndex and Options works, but using mod_alias means that you don't have to change it back in nested directories.

Redirect 303 /location/ /location/about.php

Answer 3

Here is a direct link to what you need:

http://www.webweaver.nu/html-tips/web-redirection.shtml

If you need something more advanced to handle parameters or need to remap old URLs to new ones, you can use URL rewriting:

http://corz.org/serv/tricks/htaccess2.php

Prevent directory listing (or return an empty directory listing):

http://www.besthostratings.com/articles/prevent-directory-listing.html

Answer 4

If you're asking for a file in place of 'index.html', see "DirectoryIndex" to tell it what files to use in place of 'index.html':

DirectoryIndex about.php index.html
Options –Indexes

... if you're trying to redirect all directories to a single page, then I'd cheat and do the following, which will mostly do what you're asking for:

Options +Indexes
IndexOptions +SuppressHTMLPreamble
IndexIgnore *
HeaderName /includes/header.html
ReadmeName /includes/readme.html

... and set /includes/header.html with whatever message you want (or containing a meta-redirect), and /includes/readme.html to be blank.