If you want to keep some of your website hidden or protected from the general public, there are a number of different ways to password protect your website.

You can keep some (or even all) of your website private by putting a password protection system in place. The level of security will depend on the method that you choose. How strong (or weak) your passwords are will be another factor in the security of your web pages. Aim for a password length of at least 8 characters, at least a mixture of letters and numbers.

Begin by logging into the control panel on your web host. If they're using the popular CPanel system then one of the options you'll see is to be able to password protect directories. This is a quick and easy way. All you need to do is select the folder you want to password protect, type in a user name and password and click the “save” button.

The only snag with this method is that you’ll need to either do this for every single user of your site or use a common user name and password that is issued to everyone. You can work around this by changing the password regularly but there is still the potential for people to share the log-in details.

For those who don't like to mess around with control panel options - or where your control panel doesn't offer the option - there are other ways. There is a simple software program that will do everything for you at an affordable price. Or if your site is run on a Unix system (you can ask your website host if you don't know) then you can use a file called htaccess to control who can log into your pages.

If your reason for password protecting your website is that you’re running a membership site, there are a number of software programs out there to help. One of the best supported of these is called Amember – you can get more details from this link.