I recently had to spruce up a password-protected Apache directory index site that is being used to host some files for download.
In addition to making it look more presentable, I also discovered that you can inject code into the <head> of the index page. This allowed me to achieve what I’d wanted to do for a while on that site – track visitors using Google Analytics.
To do so you already need to be using indexes and FancyIndexing. Then, simply add the following to your .htaccess file:
IndexHeadInsert "<script type=\"text/javascript\">var _gaq = _gaq || [];_gaq.push(['_setAccount', '{INSERT TRACKING CODE HERE}']);_gaq.push(['_trackPageview']);(function() {var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true;ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js';var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s);})();</script>"
Here’s the rest of my .htaccess file, excluding the security section:
Options +Indexes
IndexOptions +FancyIndexing
IndexOptions +FoldersFirst
IndexOptions +XHTML
IndexOptions +HTMLTable
IndexOptions +SuppressRules
IndexOptions +NameWidth=*
IndexOptions +SuppressDescription
IndexIgnore .??* *~ *# HEADER* README* RCS CVS *,v *,t /resources /cgi-bin
IndexStyleSheet "/resources/style.css"
IndexHeadInsert "<script type=\"text/javascript\">var _gaq = _gaq || [];_gaq.push(['_setAccount', '{INSERT TRACKING CODE HERE}']);_gaq.push(['_trackPageview']);(function() {var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true;ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js';var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s);})();</script>"