Do you have users who need access to web-based applications on multiple servers? Managing those users can be a pain when dealing with normal htpasswd-based permissions. Adding or removing users means editing each htpasswd file and remembering where all of them are.
Mod_auth_mysql is a good way to centralize that user database so that you can avoid having all of the separate htpasswd files. The apache module is available from any modern Linux distribution, so installing and configuring it takes less than 5 minutes. I started using it almost 2 years ago, and over that time have made a simple web application for managing the users and granting them permission to each application.
I’ve released the program as WebPasswd for anybody else who wants to use it. Now adding users and granting them access to application can be don with just a few clicks. Granting and revoking access to an application takes just seconds and is applied immediately. Configuring a new application takes a couple clicks, and then you just copy/paste the Apache configuration into the appropriate place on your web server. Try it out with this demo.
I think this will be useful to people. I have not seen another application that does something similar. Let me know if it works for you.