Website hosting and file security - GoDaddy?

[bobogs]

I currently host family home videos and pictures on my home computer's website (XP Pro's IIS). I chose this route because of the complete control I have over file and folder level security, and I secure the videos and pics of my daughter so that those pages/files require a username and password, which I share with people I know. I don't want a pedophile stumbling upon those pics.

With more and more traffic from friends and family wanting to see the awesome videos I create (with the help of the good folks at this forum, of course!), the upstream pipe from my cable modem is insufficient to serve up even 5mb video files...lots of time spent waiting for the file to download, even progressively. I'm thinking about getting a better hosting solution.

One of my requirements is that I have control over file and folder permissions, so that a browser will throw a standard challenge/response (basic authentication?) login dialog for specific, but not all, files or folders. I probably won't get the complete control I have now on my own server, but I'd like to have as much as possible. The sales rep at GoDaddy said their Windows-based economy package doesn't offer any level of security control, but their Linux package does, via htaccess (?) files.

Anyone have any experience with GoDaddy, or do you have any other suggestions for hosting companies that offer these kinds of security options?

Thanks!
Gary

[thecoalman]

htaccess is easy and simple and available on any linux/apache hosting plan, you could even password protect the entire site if you want. It throws a prompt up like this one:

http://www.40lbhead.com/head2head/admin/

I'd also suggest looking into something like Coppermine Photo Gallery as well, you can download this for free. This can also be set up to require a password but athentication is done through a script.... secure enough that this type of password protection is used on sites like this one. That's not why I suggest it though, it's similar to a forum but for files such as images, video, documents etc. People can leave comments, rate videos etc.

http://coppermine-gallery.net/index.php