With .htaccess it is very easy to password protect a folder or directory. The method is called htaccess password protection or htaccess authentication, and works by uploading two files called .htaccess and .htpasswd in the directory you want to password protect. The htaccess file should contain the following:

 AuthType Basic
 AuthName "Password Protected Area"
 AuthUserFile /path/to/.htpasswd
 Require valid-user

You only need to change “/path/to/.htpasswd” with the full path to your .htpasswd. Take a look at my article on how to find the full path using PHP. Next you need to upload the .htpasswd file which contains the username and password to enter the password protected folder. The .htpasswd file should contain:

test:dGRkPurkuWmW2

The above code will allow the user “test” to access the password proteced area with the password “test”. The text “dGRkPurkuWmW2″ is a encrypted version of the password. You will need to use a htpasswd generator to create another password. Each line in the .htpasswd file contains a username and password combination, so feel free to add as many combinations as you like.
The automatic way – Use the generator

You can also just use the htaccess authentication generator to create a htaccess file for password protection.

How to find the full path to a file using PHP

Sometimes you need to know the full path to a file or directory, ie if you want to setup .htaccess authentication you need to enter the full path to the .htpasswd file. If you dont know the full path and PHP is installed on the server, you can get some help here.Below is a small PHP script that prints the full path to the directory it is placed in. Copy the code and paste it into a file called fullpath.php. You can then upload the file to the directory where you want to place the .htpasswd. Then point your browser to http://www.your-domain.com/path/to/fullpath.php<?php

<?php
$dir = dirname(__FILE__);
echo "<p>Full path to this dir: " . $dir . "</p>";
echo "<p>Full path to a .htpasswd file in this dir: " . $dir . "/.htpasswd" . "</p>";
?>