basic authentication

If you want to provide basic authentication to a folder on your web server, do the following.

1. create a password file
htpasswd -c mypasswdfile username

Now enter a new password. If this file already exists then you do not need to create it by "-c".
Instead you can straight away add to the existing file a new username and a passwd.

2. Setting access.
cd to the folder that you want to protect and create a .htaccess file.
Add the following lines there.

AuthType Basic
AuthName authentication name
AuthUserFile location_of_the_mypasswd_file
AuthGroupFile ifany
Require specific_users can be given by user or set to valid-user

Thats all folks!