I am working with a website owner to have some content removed from his website. The website has been redesigned a few times but the old pages were never removed from the internet which is where the content is. There are a lot of things I'm trying to have removed and many of them I'm only able to find by guessing the URL because the new designed pages do not link to any of the old designed pages (I hope I'm making sense).

One of his sites allowed me to access his index page (root directory) which had everything listed that the site consisted of (html, jpeg, gif etc) but am not able to do this with the others. He claims that he does not know how to allow me access to this. Can anyone help? This is what the index page (root directory) looked like for the site I was able to access:



The only difference is that it starts with "Parent directory" and then continues with a list of different files such as jpgs, gif, html etc. For 2 of the sites, when I try to access them, I get a 403 forbidden page and for the others, I simply don't know what to type. Does anyone know what he would have to do give me access to the index page? I would really appreciate any help no matter how small. Thank you.

You need ftp access or access to the host cpanel to delete files.

Thank you so much for the response. Just to be clear, there wouldn't be any way for me to access the index (directory) page and simply tell him what to remove like I was able to do before with his other site?

Also, and please forgive my inexperience, he would be able to give me access to the cpanel? I suppose what I'm also asking is what would be the best and easiest way to go about this?

Who's the host? The site owner should be able to give you their cpanel login if the site has a cpanel. They should also be able to give you the info to use ftp access.

I believe it's GoDaddy. In terms of his login, I would have to ask him. I was just hoping there would be an easier way that didn't require him to give up sensitive information like passwords.

Both GoDaddy and Cpanel have the facility to grant user access without your client giving up his credentials, but unless you need to change some server configurations FTP would be the way to go imo.

If it's mainly a question of finding what's on a site and the site structure etc., I've found that Website Downloader will create a mirror site on one's hard drive without needing login details etc. unless a site is password protected even for viewing. It's abour 17 US dollars.

I haven't been able to check whether it finds files that link to nothing else in the site. It's probably worth reading their FAQ etc.

Frank

Thank you for your response. You had mentioned that both GoDaddy and Cpanel have the facility to grant user access without the person giving up their credentials; can you elaborate on that please? I'm really not looking to change anything, just go through the persons site so I can bring things to the persons attention that needs to be removed.

The reason why you get such a page as in your image is, that there is no index page there.

If the site owner contacts the host, say GoDaddy, and tells them that you are to work on the site, they can send you a new set of access credentials. I was given such details once directly from GoDaddy.

But on the other hand, I don't understand what the owner means by wanting you to work for him without giving you the tools you need to do so. If he is so concerned about his site, he can always change the password when you are done.

Thank you very much for your response. I think I understand; I assumed this page was there because it wasn't disabled from appearing and thought the other sites could have this page enabled to allow visitors to see this page and thus allow me to go through the site index.

Would this be temporary? I think the concern for the site owner could be me having permanent access to the sites.

You are right, the required login information can always be changed.