The more complex your site becomes, the more likely you are to use .htaccess and .htpasswd files to control access to directories and files.  You can of course write your .htaccess files in a text editor but you will still have to encrypt the password into MD5 format.

There is an easier way of course, and that is to use one of the many .htaccess generators on the web.  Just search for htaccess generators and you will find quite a few.

For a more sophisticated approach there is a FREE script from the people who wrote aMember called htEdit.  This Perl script can be installed into the cgi-bin of your server and whenever you need to protect a file or directory you just call up the path to htEdit, browse for the file and follow the instructions.  I have used this for years but only remembered how useful it was the other day when protecting a directory for a client.

Here’s the link:

htEdit free Perl Script