Permissions and Access to Files through the WWW

This page is part of Web Communications Guide to using FTP. It provides information on the relationship of FTP access permissions and the WWW.

It is important to understand that permissions only control access through FTP. To make files available through the WWW, they must be placed under the "www" directory located in your home directory. Any files placed under this directory will be accessible through the WWW, regardless of how their FTP access permissions are set.

Minimum Security

The following "trick" prevents users from accessing files that you do not wish to be made available to anyone, but does not allow you to grant secured access to files. To set up password and site secured access to files through the WWW, you will need to set up access authorization.

Placing a "welcome.html" file in a directory under your "www" directory will prevent browsers from generating a directory listing. This gives you basic control over which files are accessible, since if people browsing your site don't know the names of an individual file, they can't access them without you having created a link to it. However, if you fail to prevent public access to a directory through FTP, users will still be able to list the files within it using FTP, and then browse files in that directory by entering the specific filennames of the ones they wish to access.