Creating/modifiy the Apache webserver .htaccess files by hand can be a bit of a pain at times.
Today I came across a website that lets one generate an .htaccess file using a nice, Ajax-y web interface.
For example, to setup authentication, one has to create a user. You can do that by simply filling out a simple form like:
And this gives you contents that you need to copy across into your .htaccess file.
Very neat and very useful.
You can use the tool here: Create .htaccess files online