Installing the .htaccess involves a few steps. The most important thing is to make sure you do not install the .htaccess file in your main web directory. If you do, everyone will be locked out of your website. Unless this is what you want to do, make sure you create the directory and are located in it before creating the file.

Step 1: See where you are. At your prompt enter the command pwd to see what directory you are in. If you have already made your new directory and are in it - go on to Step 3.

Step 2: issue the command mkdir dirname where dirname is what you want to call the directory you will be protecting. Then enter the command cd dirname

Step 3: Using an editor such as EditPad Light or Notepad, create a file called .htaccess (lower case letters of course, with the leading period)* that looks just like this:

AuthUserFile /usr/www/dirname/.htpasswd
AuthGroupFile /dev/null
AuthName "The Secret Page"
AuthType Basic


require valid-user


Step 4: Change the AuthUserFile so that the UNIX PATH matches that of your system. This is where the password file that we will create in a moment will reside.

Step 5: Change The Secret Page to be whatever title you want to have appear on the password box.

Step 6: To create the password file, issue the following command: (NOTE: you only do it this way to create a new file)

htpasswd -c .htpasswd user_name (where user_name is a name)

If you get a message like, htpasswd: not found enter the command type htpasswd. If that doesn't do the trick, try which httpd. If htpasswd is not in your path, you will have to add that directory to your path or enter the command as /what/ever/dir/htpasswd -c user_name

Step 7: The system will ask you to enter the password for this user. It will then ask you a second time to confirm your typing.

Step 8: Continue to add new users, but with this version of the command. The -c option is only for the initial creation of the file.

htpasswd .htpasswd new_name

That is all there is to it!

Note: If you experience any problems with the file, you should seek support from your hosting company ;-)

(*Note: If you create the file on your local computer, you may have to create the file with a name like temp.htaccess, upload that file to your web server and then rename it so that the "temp" part is removed from the file name.)