What's the best way... Opinions

Hi, i have a few directories on my site that i need to password protect...

Simple Question... but i'm hoping for a few different methods (answers)

What is the best way to password protect a directory?

 

google has a lot of ideas

http://www.google.com/search?q=pass...s=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

 

I think the best and safest way would be through your .htaccess file (if applicable).

 

if .htaccess isnt applicable as you are using IIS rather than apache then a web.config file can do it via the .Net engine