Recently I wanted to restrict the access to a directory in one of our server via web, the easiest solution found was to achieve it through the use of a .htpasswd and a .htaccess file. Following are the steps used to achieve this.
Creating .htaccess file
Navigate to the directory required to provide the rescricted access via Internet and create a file .htaccess using one of your favorite editor
AuthType Basic
AuthName "Website Site with Restriced Access"
AuthUserFile /path/to/folder/required/restricted/access/.htpasswd
AuthGroupFile /dev/null
require valid-user
Creating .htpasswd file
This file will holds the allowed login credentials to content inside the restricted access folder.
$ htpasswd -c /path/to/folder/required/restricted/access/.htpasswd
$ Enter Password:
$ Re-enter Password:
$ New user added successfully
In the first command htpasswd -c will create a new file called .htpasswd in the specified location. To add more users simply issue htpasswd command without -c
Enabling Apache mod_rewrite
Use locate to find if the mod_rewrite.so is available on your server.
$ sudo updatedb
$ locate mod_rewrite.so
It will found in /usr/lib/apache2/modules
New apache follow some folders to enable and disable mods. So now do this:
$ cd /etc/apache2/mods-enabled
$ vim rewrite.load (you may use any editor to edit this file)
Now paste this following line
LoadModule rewrite_module /usr/lib/apache2/modules/mod_rewrite.so
Then edit /etc/apache2/sites-available/default or /etc/apache2/sites-available/000-default (check which one available on your system). Find the following
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
AllowOverride None
Order allow,deny
allow from all
and change it to
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
AllowOverride all
Order allow,deny
allow from all
Finally restart Apache
$ sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart
or
$ sudo service apache2 restart
tHOUGHTS & iDEAS 
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