Web gurus: A quick question

[Jayems]

I have a photography business. While I can make my website not directly link to direct links of photos (ie: they pop up in a flash gallery) anyone with any morsel of technological experience could probably figure out how to get to the direct link of my file, and download it basically. It's not a big issue now as most of my stuff is portfolio and not for sale, but might be down the road.

My questions is:

Could I somehow block people from accessing my root directories or deviating from the main navigation menus without mucking up the linkage to my online galleries?

IE: someone figures out my images are hosted at: www.abc123.com/images
If they type that in their search bar, the root stuff comes up and they can go from there and start downloading whatever they please. (note: link is not my site)

htaccess or something?

[photon]

Yes .htacess

If it has this:

Options +Indexes

change it to

Options -Indexes

You can also add a blank index.html file to each directory for additional safety, that'll get displayed rather than the directory (assuming the web server is setup to show index.html by default).

[Jayems]

I only have 1 htaccess file and it says nothing about options and indexes.

Do I have to create one for each directory?

[photon]

You should be able to add it to the one in the root directory and have it work.

Though it may need to be

Options All -Indexes

for it to impact all the sub directories as well.