What is htpasswd?

At times during web development, we will need to prevent the whole world from being able to access a particular website. That’s when Apache htpasswd comes into the picture. htpasswd is usually used together with htaccess.

Tutorial

This tutorial will teach you how to create a htpasswd file using command line.

Creating a htpasswd for the first time

htpasswd -c /<PATH_TO_YOUR_HTPASSWD_FILE>/.htpasswd <USERNAME>

Example

htpasswd -c /var/www/yourdomain.com/.htpasswd themerv

Appending new user to existing htpasswd file

htpasswd /<PATH_TO_YOUR_HTPASSWD_FILE>/.htpasswd <USERNAME>

Example

htpasswd -c /var/www/yourdomain.com/.htpasswd themerv

Using htpasswd in htaccess

AuthName "Restricted Area"
AuthType Basic
AuthUserFile /var/www/yourdomain.com/.htpasswd
require valid-user

 

That’s it you are done!