Access Control with HTTP Basic Auth

HTTP basic authentication will allow you to secure parts (or all) of your website with a user name and password without the trouble of php or javascript.

Installation

We will be using the command htpasswd to make username and password pairs.

apt install apache2-utils

Now think of a username and password and remember them.

htpasswd -c /etc/apache2/myusers username

Type out your password twice to confirm. You can do this as many times as you'd like.

Check out user name password pairs:

cat /etc/apache2/myusers

Nginx Config and Auth Basic

From here, we are going to edit our websites config file in /etc/nginx/sites-enabled. Have in mind which folder you'd like to secure. Add something like this:

server {
    #...
    location /secret-folder  {
        auth_basic "What's the Password?" ;
        auth_basic_user_file /etc/apache2/myusers ;
    }
    #...
}

If you'd like to do the opposite, such as making the entire site private except for a public section, do this:

server {
    #...
    auth_basic "What's the Password?" ;
    auth_basic_user_file /etc/apache2/myusers ;
    location /public/ {
        #...
        auth_basic off ;
    }
    #...
}

IP Addresses

If passwords aren't enough we can ban an ip or accept one.

location /api {
    #...
    allow 192.168.1.23:8080 ;
    deny 127.0.0.1 ;
}

If you want to check both a username and password with an ip address, use the satisfy directive.

location /api {
    #...
    satify all ;

    allow 192.168.1.23:8080 ;
    deny 127.0.0.1 ;

    auth_basic "What's the Password?" ;
    auth_basic_user_file /etc/apache2/myusers ;
}

Complete Example

http {
    server {
        listen 80;
        root /var/www/website ;

        #...
        location /secret-folder {
            satisfy all ;

            allow 192.168.1.3/24;
            deny 127.0.0.1 ;

            auth_basic "What's the Password?" ;
            auth_basic_user_file /etc/apache2/myusers ;
        }
    }
}

Now check your configuration with nginx -t

Reload nginx and you're good to go!