Things I Got Stuck on with BASIC Authentication

Notes on small pitfalls when using BASIC authentication.

Note

Original Japanese version: BASIIC認証でつまったこと

This is a short note from when I used BASIC authentication.

I thought I had created appropriate .htaccess and .htpasswd files, but the server returned a 500 error, or Internal Server Error.

The causes were the following:

• AuthUserFile had been written as AuthUserfile; the f was lowercase.
• The quotation marks around the AuthName string were smart quotes, “, instead of straight quotes, ".

Both are small details, but they are easy to miss.

This was a side effect of copying and pasting from a reference site. For code, it may be better to type it manually at first.

There are many other traps as well, so extra care is needed, especially before getting used to the workflow.