[ Thanks to Kevin
Reichard for this link. ]
“One of the most common needs Webmasters have is to cause the
Web server to handle all the documents in a particular directory,
or tree of directories, in the same way — such as requiring a
password before granting access to any file in the directory, or
allowing (or disallowing) directory listings. However, this need
often extends to more than just the Webmaster; consider students on
a departmental Web server at a university, or individual customers
of an ISP, or clients of a Web-hosting company. This article
describes how the Webmaster can extend permission to tailor
Apache’s behaviour to users, allowing them to have some control
over how it handles their own sub-areas of its total
Web-space.”
“This article shows how you can use per-directory configuration
files, called .htaccess files, to customise Apache behaviour — or
allow your users to do so for their own documents.”
“An .htaccess file is simply a text file containing Apache
directives. Those directives apply to the documents in the
directory where the .htaccess file is located, and to all
subdirectories under it as well. Other .htaccess files in
subdirectories may change or nullify the effects of those in parent
directories…”