[Editor's note: .htaccess is a means of placing password protection on web sites, and pages within sites. digidoodle had been trying to get it working for each user's individual site on Mac OS X ... here's what he discovered]
I just submitted a question that has been nagging me for days about how to get .htaccess files working, and I just figured out the very simple answer.
I had been spending all my time messing with the setting in the main httpd.conf file, and then realized that in the private/etc/httpd/users directory is a small config file for each user.
This is the file where the following change needs to be made:
AllowOverride none changes to AllowOverride AuthConfig
Every other source I found on the web talked about altering httpd.conf, but changes to this will not effect the pages within any particular user folder. Hope this helps somebody else!
Nate
Mac OS X Hints
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20010422202915223