PHP include files

When you install PHP, the installation process puts a file, php5.conf, in the mods-available directory of Apache. This file tells Apache to process files ending in php instead of displaying them directly. So the end-user never sees the code that is in these files, they just see the final result of the programming. (Actually, it is more general than this. The default installation also lets you use files ending in php3, php4, php5, pht, and phtml. In practice, I don’t think anyone uses anything but php.)

One of the nice things about php is that you can create include files for things like headers, footers, and menus. Rather than duplicating the same information in each file on your website, you create one file and every page has the same setup. A common practice is to name these with the suffix inc. However, if you do that, they are viewable by anyone who guesses the name. If you have access to the apache2.conf file, you can add these lines to deny access to the files.

# We don't want people to see .inc files
<Files  ~ "\.inc$">
  Order allow,deny
  Deny from all
</Files>

Alternatively, you can put your include files in a directory and deny access to the directory. In your document root, create a directory called include.php and then add a file called .htaccess that includes the following lines:

Order deny, allow
Deny from all

If the .htaccess method doesn’t work with your configuration, you can always add .php to your include files.

I am a little paranoid about files that contain database passwords. I have several dozen databases and for both organization purposes and security I put them in a directory that is outside of the document root. The default configuration of Apache does not allow access to files outside the document root so no one should be able to see them. The php processor can see them so they are available to your web pages.

To access them, use the full path or add a line to your /php5/apache2/php.ini file to tell Apache where to look for include files. Mine looks something like this:

include_path = ".:/usr/share/php5:/usr/share/php:./include.php:..:../include.php:../../include.php:../../../include.php:/srv/include.php"

The first two paths are the default php paths. Then it looks for files in include.php directories located in the current path and several paths up the chain. The last path is outside the document root and is where I put my sensitive information and things that are common to all sites on the machine e.g sidebar ads, styles, nav menus, etc. You can name these directories anything you want. Mine are called include.php because that’s how they’ve been since they were set up in 1998.