How to add ‘Basic Auth’ protection to a Matomo installation?

If you want to add a Matomo (Piwik) installation which is protected via basic access authentication (for example using a .htaccess file), you just have to add the username and password to the Matomo Server URL between the protocol and domain like this:

https://basicauth_username:basicauth_password@domain.tld/directory

Example: https://myusername:secret@demo.matomo.cloud

Note: we highly recommend to use https so you don’t send your password in plain text over the wire.