Apache and other webservers lets you password protect individual files, folders, or your entire website fairly easily with .htpasswd and .htaccess.

To password protect a folder on your site, you need to put the following code in your .htaccess file:

AuthUserFile /full/path/to/.htpasswd
AuthType Basic
AuthName “My Secret Folder”
Require valid-user

The path /full/path/to/.htpasswd should be the full path (the path to the file from the Web server’s volume root) to a text file called  .htpasswd uploaded in a folder outside of the web root, if possible.

The textfile .htpasswd contains the following informations, separated by a colon (:)

username:encryptedpassword

It’s possible to include multiple users in the .htpasswd file.

To encrypt the password, you can use free webtools like

• 4WebHelp’s online .htpasswd encryption tool
• Alterlinks .htaccess password generator
• htmlite’s htpasswd encryption page
• Htpasswd Maker Instantly create multiple password files

or  the htpasswd utility that comes with Apache.

More details are available in the following tutorial.