Support Start > Web Hosting Technical Information > Apache .htaccess Files > Password Protecting Individual Files

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It's possible to create a .htaccess file so that individual files are protected instead of protecting a whole directory (folder).

Note that creating a separate folder for sensitive files is a far simpler and less error-prone, and that’s what we usually recommend. But if you do decide to protect an individual file, you can do so by adding a FilesMatch directive to a .htaccess file. For instance, the following code will protect the file called wp-login.php:

<FilesMatch wp-login.php>
   AuthName "Restricted File"
   AuthType Basic
   AuthUserFile /home/ex/example.com/webpasswords-passwordlist
   require valid-user 
</FilesMatch>

You can create the “webpasswords-passwordlist” file using our normal control panel “password protection” pages, or by using the htpasswd command from the shell like this:

htpasswd -c /home/ex/example.com/webpasswords-passwordlist myname

As with all .htaccess files, the rules will also be applied to any subdirectories unless they are overridden by additional .htaccess files.