To password protect a folder in your webspace, follow these steps:

1. Create .htaccess
2. Create .htpasswd
3. Upload the files and edit permissions
4. Rename the files

Please note: these specific instructions can only be used within your standard homepages webspace.

Open your text editor (Notepad will do for Windows users, OS X users can use TextEdit) and paste in the following block of text.

• Replace plusnet with force9 or freeonline as appropriate
• Replace uu with the first two characters of your account username.
• Replace username with your account username.
• Replace path with the path to the folder that you want to protect

Save the text file as htaccess.txt - we'll rename it later.

Go to the htpasswd manager on our Usertools site.

• Enter the username and password you want to be use in the boxes on the left and click Submit
• You'll see the username you entered appear in the list on the right-hand side
• If you want to add more, do so and click Submit after each one
• Once you've finished, leave the Username & Password boxes blank and click Submit

It'll look something like this:

Copy & Paste this into a new file in your text editor and save it as htpasswd.txt

Connect to your webspace and go to the folder you want to password protect, and upload both files.

Use your FTP program to CHMOD htaccess.txt to 744 (File Owner: read, write & execute, group & public: read only).

CHMODing the files offers security by preventing other users from altering your files.

The final step is to rename the two files as follows - note the leading full stop:

• Rename htaccess.txt to .htaccess
• Rename htpasswd.txt to .htpasswd

The files will disappear the next time you refresh, if you need to edit or remove them you'll need to use an FTP program that allows you to see hidden files such as FileZilla. If you're not sure how to do this, there's a step-by step guide here.

That's it! If it's worked, you'll be asked for a username and password the next time you browse to the protected folder.

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