How developers handle HTTP Basic auth in WordPress maintenance tools using Playwright and urllib

Developers maintaining WordPress sites behind HTTP Basic authentication face a split-path problem where SSH-based tools work fine but HTTP-based tools like Playwright and urllib return 401 errors. The Playwright path fails visibly by capturing auth-prompt screenshots instead of real page thumbnails, while the urllib path silently masks real failures by treating repeated 401 responses as a healthy baseline. To fix this, a shared utility module called basic_auth_utils.py was built to supply credentials in the correct format to both paths from a single source, preventing format mismatches. The credentials are stored in the site configuration JSON using safe dictionary lookups so existing sites without Basic auth are unaffected. Basic auth passwords are also Fernet-encrypted at rest, consistent with how WordPress admin passwords are already handled in the tool.