Newbie securing the installation

[Guest]

Hi everybody, I am a newbe at at this oscommerce stuff and are stuck on a bit and need some help please.

I have installed it ok and are now following instructions from OSDOX.COM and are up to page13 securing the installation, so far so good. untill the Bits I pasted below. How do I get to root access, or how do I set this through use of.htaccess, where is httpd.conf, Hope someone can help the new guy on the block

Linden

 

 

Next, add ?default.php? to your

directory index listing in the

httpd.conf file for apache. This

makes your default.php page come up without having to type in the whole string: This

will keep apache from sending the entire file and directory listing of your catalog. You

can make these changes yourself by editing your apache configuration file named

httpd.conf. To edit this file directly on the server log in root and using the command

pico /path/to/apache/conf/httpd.conf If you do not have root access, you can set

this through use of .htaccess., which is also safer for beginners.

WARNING: do not mess with your httpd.conf if you don?t know what you are

doing. This could kill your entire server if you make a mistake. Make sure to

make a backup of that file before editing it

If editing your httpd.conf, add the statement:DirectoryIndex default.php to the

<IfModule mod_dir.c> section of your httpd.conf file.

[mattice]

Try this instead:

 

create a plain text file called .htaccess

(If you do it with notepad it will add .txt to it, no problem, just rename it

when you're done.)

 

Write this in the .htaccess file:

 

DirectoryIndex default.php index.php index.html index.htm

 

Upload it to the catalog directory...

that's it

[Guest]

Thanks for the reply,

 

But will this make default.php act as my current run of the mill index.html home page is this correct??

 

and is default.php the opening page for oscomerce?

 

If all the above is true will it over ride my current index.html file in Public_html?

 

will the defualt.php still open even though you said to upload to the catalog directory do I need to do anything to the public_html directory?

 

Whats the go with the httpd.conf file thats mentioned in the oscdox where do they hide that?

 

I know this stuff is basic to you lot but if you dont know even the simplest thing needs to be well explained

THANKYOU for your time:?