how to password protect entire site?

Hi guys,

I'm building my first e-commerce website (yahoo!) and have pretty much narrowed it down to between VirtueMart and Zen Cart.

I'm interested in evaluating Zen Cart but want to password protect the entire site while I am working on it so that: a) the search engines will not spider my site at all; and b) only people with the password can see and access the site.

My questions are:

1. Is .htaccess the best way to do this, or does Zen Cart have something built-in?
2. Will password-protecting a Zen Cart site affect its operation in any way?

1. Is .htaccess the best way to do this, or does Zen Cart have something built-in?
2. Will password-protecting a Zen Cart site affect its operation in any way?

To totally protect the site, the .htaccess is the most protection, though the cart does have Down fr Maintenance mode that doesn't allow wnyone in unless you have their IP added as an exception. (configurable form the Admin)

Password protecting or using Down for Maintenance will not allow many payment and shipping modules to communicate with the cart. You should be able to do all of your Template customization and most testing with the site protected.

You can use the robots.txt to tell them not to index the site but some ignore this

Thanks guys, I've used both robots.txt and my my cpanel's password protection features (htpasswd)