How to prevent or allow directory listing?

Having a listable directories on your site sometimes is useful. However, some times it can be considered a security issue. No, matter which option you prefer you can control this behavior of your site using 1 simple line:

Options +Indexes

The above line enables Directory listing.

Options –Indexes

The above disables directory listing for your web site.

The .htaccess file gives more then simply enabling and disabling of a directory listing.
With .htaccess file you can control which files to be ignored when creating a directory list.
For example:

IndexIgnore *.gif *.zip *.txt

Will make the apache server to skip all gif, zip and txt files from the directory list.
Convenient, isn’t it.

IndexIngnore *

Will just create an empty directory list.