Protecting a Directory With a Password Using vDeck

Sometimes you don’t want everybody to access certain files or areas of your website. While there are several ways to do this, the easiest one is to use a file named “.htaccess”.

Placed in the right directory, the .htaccess file allow you to control access to certain files or directories of your website (among other things). This works on Apache HTTP web servers only though. It is completely different on an IIS server.

This tutorial will show you how to protect a directory using vDeck, a Plesk-like control panel. This will save you the hassle of editing the .htaccess file manually.

For this tutorial, I’ll be using my FatCow control panel so yours might be a little bit different depending on your web host.

1. Log in to the vDeck Control Panel.
2. In the Web Site section, click on the .htaccess Editor icon :
   
3. Click Password Protection :
   
4. Select a directory to protect and click the Select button :
   
5. The currently selected directory is displayed :
   
6. Status of the selected directory is displayed. Password protection is Disabled by default
   
7. Enable password protection by first entering an Authorization Realm Name :
   
   Then click the Enable button
   
8. The screen will refresh and the status will change to Enabled and the Enable button will change to a Disable button
   
9. The Currently Protected Directories area will now show your directory
   
10. Now that the directory is protected, you need to grant users permissions to the directory using the Manage Users section. Simply create user accounts by entering their username and password :
    
11. Hit the Add User button and you’re done! Access to the selected directory will now be granted to the user you’ve just created.

At this point, you’ve probably figured out how to remove user access to the protected directory too.

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