Hi people i'm working on this again, i never got around to trying it before due to house hold problems..

any way i'm trying to password protect a www folder..
I'm using this sample
http://www.desilva.biz/apache/pwdweb2.html

but i still get the index file...

here is what i'm doing.

my .HTACCESS file is

AuthType Basic
AuthName "what are you doing here"
AuthUserFile /var/www/.htpasswd/family/passwd
require valid-user

and my passwd has my ( user_nameassword_code )

[root@www root]# mkdir /var/www/.htpasswd
[root@www root]# cd /var/www
[root@www www]# ls

[root@www www]# ls -la
total 32
drwxr-xr-x 8 root root 4096 Dec 14 08:27 .
drwxr-xr-x 22 root root 4096 Dec 1 01:59 ..
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Oct 23 18:54 cgi-bin
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 Dec 14 07:53 error
drwxrwxr-x 14 root gateway 4096 Dec 14 08:25 html
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Dec 14 08:27 .htpasswd
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 Dec 1 01:59 icons
drwxr-xr-x 14 root root 4096 Dec 1 01:53 manual
[root@www www]# cd html/
[root@www html]# ls
aliens downloads favicon.ico images linux usage
cam ebooks forums index_behind.php mm_menu.js
community family gallery index.php shop
[root@www html]# cd family/
[root@www family]# ls
passwd

[root@www root]# mkdir /var/www/.htpasswd/family
[root@www root]# cp /var/www/html/family/passwd /var/www/.htpasswd/family/passwd
[root@www root]# /etc/rc.d/init.d/httpd restart
Stopping httpd: [ OK ]
Starting httpd: [ OK ]
[root@www root]#

can some one give me a push to the right way, i am alittle lost !

TT

".htaccess" should eb lowercase. You should also make sure that httpd.conf has directory entry showing "AllowOverride Authconfig".