Password protection allows you to control access to certain
directories on your site. You choose which directories to protect,
when to apply it, and the User ID and password people will use for
access.
There are several uses for Password protection, one of them
being the ability to add
Members-Only
areas.
A software company, for example, might password protect their customer
support web pages so that only registered users of their product
could access them.
To Access Password Protection:
Log into the MindSpring Control Panel at
http://control.business.mindspring.com
Choose
Password Protection from the
Toolbox drop-down menu.
The Password Protection tool will appear in lower portion
of your Web browser window.
When you open the
Password Protect tool on the MindSpring Control Panel, you'll
see a page titled
Password Management System:
The Password Protect Main Window
The Password Management System allows you to make changes
to the password protection in your web hosting space.
The list under
Click to go to contains all the directories on the current level of your
web site. Click the name of a directory to enter it and see a list
of all the directories it contains. Clicking on a directory will
display the contents within that directory. This can be done for
as many sub-directories that exist on your Web site.
To move up to the previous level, you can click on the
Previous Directory entry in the directory listing.
The the center column of the display,
Type of access protection, will change once protection has been added to a directory
You can use the Password Management System to protect your
website in one of two ways:
The
first way
is to use "Flat Text" protection.
This is most suited to short password lists, and is portable to
other web servers. One possible problem with using Flat Text password
files is that the larger they get, the slower your site will respond
when logging in or navigating pages. Lists larger than about 1,000
users will definitely cause a problem.
The
second way
is "Berkeley DB" protection.
This protection will allow you to have larger password lists, however,
the file that is created that contains the passwords is not usually
portable to other web servers, and it can be a bit larger than a
Flat Text file with the same number of entries.
On the directory listings, you can navigate around your website
to password protect directories. You will not be able to password
protect any directory that uses Frontpage, nor can you password
protect any directory that you cannot write to. If you have problems
with a specific directory, make sure your directory has permissions
of 755 in your FTP program, or in the File Manager in the control
panel.
When you select
Add protection, you will be asked to confirm your addition. When you
continue, you can then add a list of user names and passwords to
add to the directory. With the webserver, any passwords you set
will apply to any directory below the current one, unless you set up
additional password protection below that.
You can also modify passwords and users later, using the Modify protection
button from the directory list. This will allow you to:
-
List Users
-
Add Users
-
Change Passwords
-
Remove Users
-
Confirm Passwords
There are also a few options available that should be considered "Advanced",
as in you should have a pretty good understanding of Apache to use.
The last thing you can do is
Activate/Inactivateyour protection. This does not remove your password list,
but "enables" and "disables" your password protection, which is
good for temporarily allowing or restricting access.
To add users, click the
Add Protection button beside the directory you want to protect. This
will bring up the following dialog:
step_1.gif
Select the type of protection you would like to use, and
then press the
Set Protection Type button. You will be asked to confirm your decision on
the next screen.
step_2.gif
If you are sure you want to continue, click the
Yes button. The next screen has two parts. This screen allows
you to add user/password combinations to the directory's
protection. There are two ways to do this.
In the first part, you can enter usernames and passwords
in the individual boxes. This is good if you only have a few
users to add
password_file
The second half has a large box where you can paste a
combination of usernames and passwords. You must enter the user
names and passwords, each on a single line, where the user name
and the passwords are separated by a colon (:). For example:
johnsmith:4indigo5
joejohnson:5beta32
thirdname:thirdpwd
import_list
Once you have submitted the changes, your password protection
will be active. The center column will have changed to reflect
the type of protection you selected:
protected_folder
You can then modify the changes by clicking the
Modify Protectionbutton, or temporarily using the
Inactivateor
Activate buttons.
To change a directory's password protection, click
the
Modify Protection button beside a protected directory.
You will then see the following screen:
change_password_entries
You can change a user's password by entering
a new password in the Password box, and clicking the
Change Password button. You can also remove the user by clicking the
Remove User button.
If you need to modify a user, and you know his/her
user name, you can also make changes directly to that account
via the next section:
modify_user
This will let you add/remove/change
users, and will allow you to confirm an account's password
without having to reset it.
You can't actually see passwords. You can
only change them. If you forget your password, you can get a new
one-- but you won't be told what your old one was.
At the bottom of the modify page, there are some advanced
features you can use to make changes to an account.
Note: WARNING - We recommend that only advanced users use
the last section. Changes made may have serious repercussions
on your password protection. Please be careful.
change_access_control
Here you can make changes to the type of protection for
the current directory, make direct changes to your .htaccess
file (The Apache control file), and clear protection completely
from a directory.
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