password protect a site

Hi,

I will be moving a site from my local machine to my host but need to password protect it to only allow my beta testers to have access to it. I was thinking of putting some sort of permission on the index.php file to force users to enter username/password. Is this possible? What is the easiest way to accomplish this?

Any pointers would be greatly appreciated.

Chuender

If I remember correctly, there's a setting in the admin which will require the user to be logged in to use the site.

If you password protect or use the Down for Maintenance mode your testers will not be able to test any of the live payment services. If that is okay, I would suggest using the Down for maintenance mode. You can then add those IPs of your testers for access in the Admin> Configuration> Down for Maintenance.

I would need to do this for both zen cart and another webservice I'm working on. Is there a way to do this using permissions at the OS level, in Linux?

wasn't looking at the right place but i found a solution here:
http://linuxhelp.blogspot.com/2006/02/password-protect-your-website-hosted.html

and in the process found that my dedicated host runs plesk, which allow me to protect director on the server.

Could this possibly be done to just effect a category of products on the site? and if so would it work no matter how the user found the page (ie. putting link in address bar vs. click to it from the non protected portions of the site).