how to serve directories with apache?

i am new to web servers. i have used ftp and scp in the past to serve my mp3 and movie folders across the lan, and now i want to do it with apache. but apache refuses to show anything except the rendered index.html. i tried changing the exported directory with yast, but that wasn't any good. browser shows "403 no permission" if i try to access the directory listing. i have checked the file and folder permissions, and they are okay (folders 755, files 644). so what do i need to do? running suse 9.2. - t. -- cogito, ergo es.