Can the use of .htaccess for password protection in PHP impact the performance of the website or application?

Using .htaccess for password protection in PHP can potentially impact the performance of the website or application because each request needs to be processed by the server to check for authentication. This can add overhead and slow down the response time for each request. One way to mitigate this impact is to use a more efficient method of authentication within the PHP application itself, such as using session-based authentication. 

<?php
session_start();

if (!isset($_SESSION['authenticated']) || $_SESSION['authenticated'] !== true) {
    header('HTTP/1.1 401 Unauthorized');
    exit;
}
?>

Keywords

.htaccess password protection performance website application

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