On the old shared-server (ss) password protecting a directory was fairly easy. The same seemed to be the case for the grid-server (gs) lite. Find the directory, click to protect it and then add users or groups who are allowed to enter. Right, I did that and then went to test it.

The browser’s login message box appeared, I put in the login and password. The page seemed to start to load because the title appeared in the browser window. But the login message box showed up again, so I filled out the form, again- access granted. I thought, ok, that’s kind of strange maybe typed something in wrong. Uh, no. There is an issue with mediatemple. They couldn’t give me any more direction than this:

This is due to the .htaccess file in domain.com/html/protected_directory so there’s not really anything you can do about it. You can try editing this file (from the file manager in the Account Center) and moving the block of text for the password protection so that it’s above the block of text for wordpress but I’m not sure if that will work. If not then you’re stuck entering the password twice, sorry.

I tried this and no luck. So I’m “stuck” entering the information twice, which taking the 1/2 full glass outlook means that it’s kind of double protected. But you know what, the glass is only 1/2 (either full or empty, take your pick). There’s gotta be fix.

UPDATE 10/19/07:
This problem has been solved.  No, not by any .htaccess trickery. It just worked. Today when I signed in the login and password were only required once. I have a sneaking suspicion that the recent fixes to the grid.cluster.2 (http://weblog.mediatemple.net/weblog/category/system-incidents/gridcluster2-network-latency/)might have not only fixed the latency issues (that in the past few weeks was making everything run molasses slow) but the double login for the password protected directories. Hurray!