Industry guru Dave Taylor offers free tech support on a wide variety of technical and business topics, including HTML, Apple iPhone, online advertising, Cascading Style Sheets, Web design, management, Unix, Linux, search engine optimization, online dating, Mac OS X, shell script programming and Microsoft Windows.

Password protecting individual files?

A reader writes:

I know about the ".htaccess" file as a way of protecting entire directories, but I'm wondering if I can use the ".htaccess" file to require a username and password in order to access a single file while allowing the rest of the directory to remain open?

Dave's Answer: When I first read this question, my instinct was to say "no", but a bit of research revealed that this is indeed quite possible, and here's what you'd want to put in your ".htaccess" file:

<Files myfile.html>
Require valid-user
</Files>

Check out The Apache documentation on .htaccess for more information, and good luck!

Help others find this article at Del.icio.us, Digg, Netscape, Reddit, and Stumble Upon

Categorized: CGI Scripts and Web Site Programming (Article 3685)
Tagged:
Previous: Cover prototype of my latest book: "Creating Cool Web Sites"
Next: Nice review of "Learning Unix for Mac OS X Panther"

Subscribe!

Never miss another useful Q&A article again! Subscribe to AskDaveTaylor with Google Reader.

Comments

So if i just had like a regular windows xp what would i do for that step by step?to protect a single file like that?

Posted by: LOSTCOven at October 12, 2005 2:42 AM

Please explain how I can empty my restore program . I believe it must become a bloated file after a while. It would be nice to empty it and restart afresh.

Posted by: Ray Moher at July 15, 2006 6:49 AM

I have something to say, now that you mention it, but ...

I do have a lot to say, and questions of my own for that matter, but first I'd like to say thank you for all your efforts on this Web site by buying you a cup of coffee!

I do have a comment, now that you mention it!