Protecting Your Pages / WebDeveloper.com ®

Protecting Your Pages
(Part 2)

By Nathan Poole

Setting up htpasswd

To get started you'll need to open a telnet session to your server (in Windows 9x you can go Start -> Run then type telnet your_host.com).

Once logged in, you'll need to create a directory (syntax: mkdir directory_name) which you would like to protect from non-authorized users (that is, a directory accessible by members only).

You'll need to create an .htaccess file (syntax: vi .htaccess) and open it for writing (hit your "I" key) and print the following:

AuthUserFile /your/path/to/your/directory/.htpasswd AuthGroupFile /dev/null AuthName ByPassword AuthType Basic

require user myfriend

Note Where it is written "/your/path/to/your/directory/" you'll need to insert the path of your htpasswd file. You can see which directory you're in by typing pwd at the prompt. You'll then need to hit your ESC key and type :x.

Now you should be back at the UNIX shell prompt and you'll need to type /usr/local/bin/htpasswd -c .htpasswd myfriend (assuming myfriend is the user you're wanting to create). If the above results in a response of "not found" type "whereis htpasswd" and use the output in place of the previous directory shown. It will ask you for a password once, and then again. Try loading the directory and you should be promted with a dialog box.

Conclusion

/path/to/htpasswd username

username