Password protecting a directory and all of it's subfolders using .htaccess

It's a simple two step process

In your .htaccess put

AuthType Basic
AuthName "restricted area"
AuthUserFile /path/to/the/directory/you/are/protecting/.htpasswd
require valid-user

use http://www.htaccesstools.com/htpasswd-generator/ or command line to generate password and put it in the .htpasswd

Note 1: If you are using cPanel you should configure in the security section "Password Protect Directories"

EDIT: If this didn't work then propably you need to do a AllowOverride All to the directory of the .htaccess (or atleast to previous ones) in http.conf followed by a apache restart

<Directory /path/to/the/directory/of/htaccess>
      Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
      AllowOverride All
</Directory>

To password protect a directory served by Apache, you need a .htaccess file in the directory you want to protect and a .htpasswd file that can be anywhere on your system that the Apache user can access (but put it somewhere sensible and private). You most likely do not want to put .htpasswd in the same folder as .htaccess.

The .htaccess file may already exist. If not, create it. Then insert:

AuthType Basic
AuthName "Your authorization required message."
AuthUserFile /path/to/.htpasswd
require valid-user

Then create a .htpasswd file using whatever username and password you want. The password should be encrypted. If you are on a Linux server, you can use the htpasswd command which will encrypt the password for you. Here is how that command can be used for this:

htpasswd -b /path/to/password/file username password

You need to generate a password (username+password) string for authentication, write it to a file and place it inside the subdirectory you want to restrict access.

String looks like,

username:hashkey

• You can use HTTP password generator tool to do this.
• Copy and paste the string you obtained from the above site to a new file (.htpasswd) anywhere outside your site's webroot (better to keep anywhere inside home directory of the user).
• Add following lines in your .htaccess file.

AuthType Basic
AuthName "Require Authentication"
AuthUserFile [PATH_TO_FILE]/.htpasswd
Require valid-user

• If the password is not triggering, check the permission of .htaccess file.

• If authentication fails, check the existence of .htpasswd file in the specified location. (Make sure your user account has enough privileges on .htpasswd file to read)

• You do not need to restart the server to achieve this.

Please let me know if you have any queries.