[lug] OT: Viewing website contents.

[Jeff Schroeder]

John wrote:

> suppose I visited www.bob.com, and I think he may have
> a BobsBeer.html page and maybe some beer pix, but for some reason he
> chose not to make a link to it from his index page (which may be
> work-related).  Is there any way I can just browse all the files in
> that "web" directory, to see what's available?

It depends on the settings of the web server.  For example, Apache can 
be configured to list files ("Options Indexes" in httpd.conf) but often 
is configured NOT to do so, for obvious security reasons.  Apache can 
also be configured (via "DirectoryIndex" in httpd.conf) to load a 
certain file when an index is requested; i.e., no page name is given in 
the URL.

In general, a well-configured web server will not allow indexing and 
will provide one or more default files (index.html, index.htm, 
default.htm, etc.) to load when no page is given.

HTH,
Jeff