Adding password protected directory to site?

Messiah Khan · 10 Dec 2009 at 22:58

I'm trying to add a password protected directory to my website/hosting space. My host is Register1. I've created a directory, then gone in to the control panel, created a user group and user and protected the new directory. But when I try and go to the directory in a browser, it just says;

Forbidden

You don't have permission to access /personal/ on this server.

What am I doing wrong?

PhillyDee · 10 Dec 2009 at 23:04

No idea. I try your website (following your sig for the site and the directory you put in) and it asks me for a username and password. Try clearing cookies / cache. It may be remembering an old password for your site.

Messiah Khan · 10 Dec 2009 at 23:09

PhillyDee said:
No idea. I try your website (following your sig for the site and the directory you put in) and it asks me for a username and password. Try clearing cookies / cache. It may be remembering an old password for your site.

Where is it asking for a password? In;

www.afowler.co.uk
or
www.afowler.co.uk/personal

Edit; I did get a password box the first time I tried, but now it refuses to give me the option, despite clearing cookies and cache. :/

radderfire · 10 Dec 2009 at 23:09

Just checking that you've assigned the user to the user group? It sounds like an assignation problem / privilege granting problem.

Rgds

PhillyDee · 10 Dec 2009 at 23:11

Bottom one.
the www.afowler.co.uk/personal
Asks in a pop-up box. For the record: IE8 here. And im off to bed!

Nitrojan · 10 Dec 2009 at 23:13

PhillyDee said:
Bottom one.
the www.afowler.co.uk/personal
Asks in a pop-up box. For the record: IE8 here. And im off to bed!

Same.. All good here too

Messiah Khan · 10 Dec 2009 at 23:26

radderfire said:
Just checking that you've assigned the user to the user group? It sounds like an assignation problem / privilege granting problem.

Rgds

Yeah, as far as I can tell it is all set right. I've set up a user which is a part of the admin group. I then have assigned the admin group to have access to the folder.

PhillyDee said:
Bottom one.
the www.afowler.co.uk/personal
Asks in a pop-up box. For the record: IE8 here. And im off to bed!

Nitrojan said:
Same.. All good here too

Thanks guys. Clearing the cache in Firefox seemed to work (normally use Opera). It is now giving me the password box, but when the I enter the username and password it keeps blocking me and going back to the 403 error.

suarve · 11 Dec 2009 at 09:29

Messiah Khan said:
but when the I enter the username and password it keeps blocking me and going back to the 403 error.

Try deleting the user you have created and recreating a a new one.

Messiah Khan · 11 Dec 2009 at 22:46

suarve said:
Try deleting the user you have created and recreating a a new one.

Nope, doesn't seem to work. It's like all the folders are 'locked' by default. If I try and go to any other folder that hasn't been password protected, I still get a 403 error.

suarve · 12 Dec 2009 at 12:22

Seems weird, as this is really simple to setup. Are you doing this through some sort of control panel or directly on your webspace?

Have you tried putting some dummy content in the directory you're protecting and ending your urls using a forward slash and no forward slash E.g. domain/secret and domain.com/secret/

Messiah Khan · 12 Dec 2009 at 16:18

suarve said:
Seems weird, as this is really simple to setup. Are you doing this through some sort of control panel or directly on your webspace?

Have you tried putting some dummy content in the directory you're protecting and ending your urls using a forward slash and no forward slash E.g. domain/secret and domain.com/secret/

I'm doing it from the register1 control panel. I've tried it with and without dummy content, and with and without a trailing slash. Still no luck. :/

suarve · 12 Dec 2009 at 17:34

Messiah Khan said:
I'm doing it from the register1 control panel. I've tried it with and without dummy content, and with and without a trailing slash. Still no luck. :/

If you're on Linux hosting you could try creating the files yourself - It's really not that hard: http://www.thesitewizard.com/apache/password-protect-directory.shtml

Alternatively, I'd just send over a quick support email.

Messiah Khan · 12 Dec 2009 at 21:17

Finally figured it out. There was was index.html file and the .htaccess file wasn't set to show the file directory. I've added the following line to the .htaccess file;

Options +Indexes

And all is well in the world.

Thanks for the suggestions everyone.