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Disable the Services Directory

The Services Directory provides a browsable HTML-based representation of all your ArcGIS Server web services and the actions you can perform on them through REST requests. The Services Directory is a useful development tool and mechanism to get an overview of services and their operations. However, you can disable the Services Directory if you do not want search engines and individuals to easily discover and directly interact with individual services.

This is not a privacy setting. Disabling the Services Directory does not prevent access to or the ability to discover services and their operations; it only removes the HTML pages for viewing the services and the list of supported operations for each of the services. All services are still fully accessible in JSON format (f=json). Security restrictions on the services are still applicable.

Follow these steps to disable the Services Directory:

  1. Open the ArcGIS Server Administrator Directory and sign in with an account that has been granted administrator privileges.

    The Administrator Directory URL is in the form https://gisserver.domain.com:6443/arcgis/admin.

  2. Access the Services Directory settings by clicking system > handlers > rest > servicesdirectory > edit.
  3. Uncheck Services Directory Enabled and click Save.