This guide explains the "Options +Indexes" directive for Web Hosting, which facilitates navigation for visitors and allows for more advanced customization of how files are displayed.

Preamble

• One of the main advantages of enabling directory indexing is that visitors can view and list all files and subdirectories of a given directory, even if they do not know the exact name of the file they are looking for. This can be particularly useful for file-sharing websites or download sites.
• Directory indexing also facilitates navigation for visitors who are not familiar with the file structure of the site. They can simply browse through the subdirectories to find the file or folder they need.
• The "Options +Indexes" directive can be customized to display additional information, such as the size and modification date of files, or to hide specific files or directories.
• Without this directive, a visitor may encounter an error of the following type:

Accès interdit!
Vous n'avez pas le droit d'accéder au répertoire demandé.
Soit il n'y a pas de document index soit le répertoire est protégé.
Si vous pensez qu'il s'agit d'une erreur du serveur, veuillez contacter le gestionnaire du site.
Error 403

Listing the contents of a web folder

To list the items contained in a folder without a specific index:

1. Create a .htaccess file in the folder in question.
2. Enter the following command: Options +Indexes

It should be noted that this solution will only work if you have no index in the directory in question; you need to remove the index.php, index.html, index.htm files, etc. but also the possible welcome.php file...

Customizing the display

Here is an example of code to customize the appearance of the file list generated by Apache:

Options +Indexes
IndexOptions FancyIndexing
IndexOptions FoldersFirst IgnoreCase NameWidth=* DescriptionWidth=* Charset=UTF-8
HeaderName header.html
ReadmeName footer.html

In this example, the user enables the "Indexes" option, adds the "FancyIndexing" option for a more aesthetic appearance, specifies the sorting order of the files, defines the width of the columns for the name and description of the files, and specifies the names of the files to use for the header and footer of the file list.