In my post about the Top 10 Silly Mistakes, a lot of readers were surprised about one particular seemingly “common” mistake, which is not turning off directory browsing for your folders.

This is really simple to do, and will avoid your web content from being stolen as people will not be able to browse the contents of your folder by typing it into the browser. If you type in www.yoursite.com/wp-content/plugins and directory browsing is not turned off for your web site, you can see the content of the entire folder, like this:

This exposes your website to thieves and hackers, making their lives much easier and serving your files to them on a silver platter.

To turn off directory browsing, simple log into your Cpanel account and look for the “Index Manager” icon, click on it.

This will take you to another page where you can turn off directory browsing for individual folders, or for the entire site. Usually, to turn off indexing for the entire site you need to click on the root folder, which is public_html

Finally, change the settings from “Default System Setting” to “No Indexing”. Now, your folders should be protected from peeping toms forever.

Running an online business involves learning how to secure your website, intellectual property, and business processes from people that mean to do you harm, and turning off directory browsing is the easiest (but most overlooked) way to get started in the right path.