allow bots (googlebot) into htpasswd protected directories
I run cheesepie.net, a large collection of stupid stuff organized into directory listings. Its hosted out of my garage on measly 600k upload DSL line, so I need to save bandwidth as much as possible.Recently, though, hotlinking and flagrant bandwidth mooching has become a big problem, especially for the flash movie directory of my site (cheesepie.net/flash).
To combat this, I placed an apache htpasswd on the directory and use the AuthName option to tell people the username and password. This works fine for the most part, but now I'm worried that bots (mainly googlebot, who I love dearly) won't be able to access the directory.
Is there a way to allow bots to pass the htpasswd protection?
Or can anyone think of a better way of stopping flash movie bandwidth moochers?