Problem:
GoDaddy makes it simple to password protect a directory. You just go to their file manager, click on a directory, click on Permissions, fill out a user and password and you’re done. Bad thing is that you can’t password protect anything in the public root folder.
Solution:
Easiest solution is to password protect a subdirectory, open .htaccess, copy the code there and paste it into your .htaccess in the root public folder and then wait a few hours. Seriously, just wait. I followed these steps and didn’t wait, got worried it wasn’t working and undid everything. a few hours later I ran into this post: http://www.besthostratings.com/articles/http-auth-php-cgi.html
With that post I felt that I could hackily get the authenticated username and password and then use PHP to determine whether the username/password is correct or not. Then I could show or not show what I needed. After all, this was only temporary until the client’s site went live. I soon found out however that the first solution worked this time. Go figure.