WordPress Security – How to Disable Directory Browsing? Why is it Essential?

Some webserver like Apache allows directory browsing and it is default setting. But it is not good to allow user to browse directory. The main reason to prevent  directory browsing is security matter. When it is open to browse user can see everything in server, even every files and uploads. By the way we are here for our users to help them, but all are not faithful, some visitor may be hacker too. They may be harmful for us when they browse directory. They can see every files and folder in our web directory like which plugin and many more. It becomes plus point to hack the site. So we should always keep disable directory browsing for security purpose. We can disable directory browsing with variety of ways two easy steps I am sharing with you:

Disable Directory Browsing Using .htaccess

• Login to Cpanel using user name and password.
• When you go to manage files under file manager section, please tick show hidden files (dot files). Actually there so many dot files which are hidden by default but we can see them by click this option.
• Now .htaccess file will be displayed, select it and edit it, Look for options Indexes, modify it by placing (-) in middle like Options–Indexes. If there is no Options Indexes then need to add it in new line.
• Now see directory browsing will be off, you are safe now.

Disable Directory Browsing In Cpanel

• You can also disable directory browsing by loging in your cpanel account. Log in to Cpanel and go to Advanced Section to watch Index Manager.

• Click and it will navigate to directories folders. Here you can select folder which you want to disable for directory browsing. Click over it and Select No Index option finally hit save button. You are done now this particular directory not be accessible to browse anymore.