Introduction

There are times when you might want to restrict access to certain areas of your website, such as private pages, administrative folders, or in-development sections. To help you achieve this, Plesk provides a convenient feature called Password-Protected Directories.

This feature allows you to secure any directory on your website by requiring visitors to enter a valid username and password before they can access it. It is a simple yet effective way to add an extra layer of security without the need for coding or manual configuration.

In this tutorial, we will guide you through the process of creating directory protection for your website in Plesk.

Getting Started

First and foremost, make sure you are logged in to your Plesk control panel. To perform that, please enter your IP address, hostname, or domain name inside your web browser’s search bar and add “:8443” at the end. It should look something like: “https://yourdomain.com:8443”. By doing so, you will be prompted by a login form that requests your username and password.

After logging in with your username and password, Plesk will automatically display the “Websites & Domains” page, which will serve as the index page from where you can manage everything related to your websites and domains on Plesk.

Accessing the Directory Protection Settings

To access the directory protection feature, expand the domain over which you want to have this configured, using the drop-down menu at the far left side, corresponding to the domain.

After the drop-down menu is expanded, please locate the Password-protected directories functionality and click on it.

Performing the action above will redirect you to the password-protected directory setup page. Please continue with the tutorial to understand exactly how to do that.

Creating a New Protected Directory

To create a new protected area, please click on the “+Add Protected Directory” button.

After performing the action above, the side menu will appear from the left side, where you will be prompted to enter the following details:

• Directory name - Please specify the folder path you want to protect. You can use an existing directory or type a new one (for example, /private or /admin). If you want to password-protect the domain itself, just leave this field with a slash “/”.
• Protected area name - Please enter a label for the protected area. This name will appear in the authentication prompt when visitors try to access the folder.
  

After you have entered the necessary details, please click the “Create” button located at the bottom left side of the pop-up window to save your settings.

Plesk will automatically secure this directory and display it in the list of protected areas.

Now that we have added the password-protected directory, let’s assign users who can access it!

Adding Authorized Users

After protecting the directory, you must create at least one user who will have access to it. To do so, please click on the row corresponding to the password-protected directory you just created.

Performing this action will redirect you to a page where you will initially see a page with a “+ Add User” button in the middle. Please click on it.

Upon doing so, a pop-up window will appear from the left side, allowing you to add a username and a password with access to the newly created password-protected directory.

After typing in your username and password, please click on the “Create” button at the bottom left side.

After doing that, the page will refresh, and you will see the user listed inside a table section.

You may repeat this process if you wish to grant access to multiple users. Each person will have their own set of credentials for secure access. 

If you want to remove a user, you can tick the checkbox corresponding to the specific user and then click the “Remove” button located above the table section.

Verifying the Protection

Once you have added the users, the directory is now protected. To verify it, please open your browser and access the URL of the protected folder.

For example:

• https://hostarmadatutorials.com

You should see a small pop-up window prompting you to enter a username and password. Please enter the credentials you created earlier to confirm that the protection works correctly.

If you can access the directory after entering your credentials, then the setup has been completed successfully.

Conclusion

As you can see, Plesk makes it extremely easy to protect sensitive areas of your website. The Password-Protected Directories feature helps you restrict access to private sections without requiring any manual file edits or custom scripts.

By creating a protected directory and assigning authorized users, you can ensure that only approved individuals can view or modify the content within.

We hope this tutorial has been helpful, and we kindly encourage you to use directory protection in Plesk whenever you need to secure private sections of your website.