URLs with a dot return 403 Forbidden

Hi, I am new to this site and somewhat new to web hosting also. I am working on my first "real" website. I have been a programmer for a very long time, but I do C# and not web development, however, I was able to pick it up pretty quick because of this. So I am having a problem with a site that I just uploaded to a free web host that uses cPanel. I was testing the site on my own Apache server for a while and it was working fine, but after uploading to the real site, I am having a problem. There is a part of the site that has a file browser programmed in PHP. In order to hide the "operating files" from the user who is browsing, I use a dot (period) preceding the file name. On my own server this worked fine, but on the cPanel server, I am getting 403 Forbidden with anything that is hidden using the period. I am pretty new to this. Could anyone help me figure out what I need to change about the server to make it working? The alternative would be to reprogram the file browser, but based on the way it's made it would be a complete pain in the ass to make it work without the .hidden files.