Visibilty of webspace structure

[flangeway]

Some ntl webspaces, e.g., taking the first one listed in ntl's 'Customer Directory' merely for the sake of illustration:

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/eric.brooks/

show a 'Index of /<username>' style of presentation, which lists the entire webspace structure.

Some ntl webspaces, e.g. taking the second one listed (again, merely for the sake of illustration):

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/allan.aldred/ do not. (This second example is a normal homepage.)

Others, e.g. http://homepage.ntlworld.com/stevewhittle, show a error 404 'page cannot be found', which commonly indicates a lack of any webspace content.

I'm very confused about all this. Does the existence of an index.htm page override the display of the webspace structure? How does one make the entire webspace structure and content invisible to the casual viewer?=

newbie regards
flangeway

P.S. I intend to use the excellent WS_FTP LE as my ftp uploader.

[Halcyon]

First of all, to the site. I hope you enjoy it here.


Yes, you are right, the Index.html does make the contents of the directory invisible.
To make this possible.

1. Open up Notepad.

2. Dont type anything, Just save the blank file as index.html

3. Upload the file index.html to your NTL space.

Unless you are a hacker, normal Viewers will now no longer see your directory and what it contains.

[ikthius]

hi flangeway,

well first of all do you have an index.html page which should be your home/1st page?

this is why you have the tree structure in the first link.

the second link shows you that the person made their homepage and called it index.html or home.html

the third link is a dead link so the host has a page for not found pages.

hope this helps.

ik

EDIT: if you look at my page at www.woskf.co.uk it transports you to the webpage it is on, my ntl account.
my first page i designed and called it index.html so the link should look like this in the address bar: http://homepage.ntlworld.com/j.kelly627/index.html
all other links are connected to this.
EDIT 2: the first link may only show to the end of the j.kelly627 because I have made the woskf link to the whole site so it may end in j.kelly627/ without the index.html but click on any link and then click home and you will see what I mean.

[flangeway]

Thanks guys - loading up the blank index.html did the trick.

flangeway

[SMHarman]

On better webspace you can set up a file called .htaccess this defines what happens if the site wants to display an index or what happens on a 404 or other error type.
http://www.javascriptkit.com/howto/htaccess.shtml
looks a good resource - cant do this on NTL space though.