I have a very plain website that I need use to offer a large archive of old files from the early days of the web. Lots of 16bit software compilations and the like. The problem is I don't want to manually create entries for each one in a php script. I don't want to manually create a long list of HTML links for each one either. There are also sub-directories to take into account as well and no descriptions of the files are needed. I have tried to just use the apache directory to list them but it looks really ugly to the point where its also a bit awkward for some users to traverse even. So I'm seeking advice here on how to easily present these file directories to users. Thank you all in advance!
On a php based site you could use scandir and format the output when you echo the results. This would look marginally better than just the Apache directory listing. For sure you could add a header, footer, and sidepanels to the page.
I would use pafiledb. It's a simple PHP script that is a great download management system. http://webscripts.softpedia.com/script/Database-Tools/paFileDB-1553.html