Block directory access with .htaccess rules does not work

Question

I am trying to block access to a specific folder and all of its content. I use methods suggested on the Internet, but they do not work.

This method does nothing:

RewriteRule ^folder_name/?$ - [F,L]
ErrorDocument 403 default

And this one brings internal server error:

<Directory "/folder_name/">
deny from all
</Directory>

What is wrong here?

My htaccess file looks like this:

RewriteEngine on
Options -Indexes
DirectoryIndex index.html

RewriteCond %{SERVER_PORT} 80 
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://%{HTTP_HOST}/$1 [R,L]

#rewrite rules for base URLs
RewriteRule ^([^/\.]+)[/]*$ $1\.html [QSA,L]

Answer 1

RewriteRule ^folder_name/?$ - [F,L]

This blocks access to the folder only; not its contents (because of the trailing end-of-string anchor). And since you have existing mod_rewrite directives, it will need to go near the top, before the existing directives.

Generally, you should have blocking directives first.

RewriteRule ^folder_name - [F]

: remaining directives follow

Alternatively, you create another .htaccess file inside the directory you want to block, with a single directive:

Require all denied

Answer 2

I found a method that works:

RedirectMatch 404 ^/folder_name/.*$