WordPress preventing you from password protecting a directory?

You wish to password protect a subdirectory using the cPanel icon (or a .htpasswd file), but you have WordPress installed in public_html with permalinks enabled. This causes your password protection to never work. The solution is simple.

1. Login to your control panel's File Manager, or just connect to your domain with FTP.
2. Edit the .htaccess file in your WordPress home folder (public_html) and remove the line shown in bold.
   Example:
   # BEGIN WordPress
   <IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
   RewriteEngine On
   RewriteBase /
   RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
   RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
   RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
   </IfModule>
   # END WordPress
   
3. Replace that line with this new line:
   
   RewriteRule ./ /index.php [L]
4. The final code segment will look like this:
   
   # BEGIN WordPress
   <IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
   RewriteEngine On
   RewriteBase /
   RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
   RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
   RewriteRule ./ /index.php [L]
   </IfModule>
   # END WordPress
   

Now it's fixed.