I am sorry, I obviously did not understand the question correctly. I am not aware of any setting by that "auth_basic" can or needs to be activated to be used with PHP. It is a web server module, not a PHP module. I assume that it is not displayed on the PHP info page, because it is not a PHP module. Neither am I aware that PHP documentation requires any kind of "auth_basic" activation, link or something. Is this what you want to use it for? http://php.net/manual/en/features.http-auth.php