You’ll find sometime that when you deploy WordPress in order for permalinks to work correctly you need a proper .htaccess file. This .htaccess also affects anything else you place within your web root when WordPress lives.
For instance if you need to password protect a directory within the your webroot where WordPress lives. You’ll find that when you do so, and try to visit that folder in a web browser that a 404 WordPress page will be displayed. To fix this, you simply need to add the following to your main .htaccess file that has your WordPress rules.
1 |
ErrorDocument 401 default |
This should then allow you to use your password protected directories as you normally would if you didn’t have WordPress installed.
Source: http://www.andrewrollins.com/2008/01/22/wordpress-and-htaccess-password-protected-directories/