Restricting access to Main Directory while Allowing Sub Directory in Apache

Vote count:

0

I have an enterprise client with a large site living on a VPS. When they purchased their hosting plan, they received a free domain along with it. That free domain, of course, was listed as the primary domain and lives in public_html.

So, we build a new site using that domain as a dev environment (the site that we were re-building was hosted elsewhere at the time). During development, I password-protected public_html in order to keep prying eyes and bots away from the site under construction. Now, the new site's real domain's A record is pointed to the new hosting account as an add-on. This, of course means that it is technically living in a sub-directory, and password protection had to be lifted for launch.

So, my question is:

a. I believe that I can add password protection back to public_html and open up the sub-directory by adding an .htaccess file to the sub-directory with the following declaration:

Satisfy Any
Allow From All

Is that correct? And, if so...

b. Isn't that going to screw up SEO for the new site (i.e.: Won't bots stop crawling at the public_html level instead of going further down the hierarchy to where they're allowed)?

Thanks in advance for the responses.

asked 1 min ago

DavidBrown

37

Restricting access to Main Directory while Allowing Sub Directory in Apache