Apache <Directory> blocks

Question

I'm trying to make it so that the outside world can't access a specific section of my website. What I did was:

<Directory /Library/WebServer/.../secrets/>
     Order deny,allow
     Deny from all
     Allow from 10.0.1.18
</Directory>

(10.0.1.18 is my computer's internal IP) That seemed to work for the root folder, but not for subfolders. So I tried secrets/* in the directory block, but that disabled everything. Anyone could access the secrets folder.

How would I make the directory block apply to subfolders?

Answer 1

According to this:

<Directory> and </Directory> are used to enclose a group of directives that will apply only to the named directory, sub-directories of that directory, and the files within the respective directories.

So if you omit the trailing slash then this should work:

<Directory /Library/WebServer/.../secrets>

secrets/* means subdirectories and files below the secrets directory, not the directory itself.