Greg K — Thu, 01 Apr 2004 17:04:36 +0000

One thing I forgot to mention before:

Don't forget that people who use the default installation for the latest norton antivirus/internet security will NOT be able to access the files due to norton by default blocking the referring page information to "protect your privacy".

If you go this route, you may want a note on the site to let people know if they have norton they may have difficulties, and how to go into the settings to disable this "feature".

-Greg

eniety — Thu, 01 Apr 2004 15:07:22 +0000

Here are some scripts: http://php.resourceindex.com/Complete_Scripts/File_Management/File_Downloading/

If you went the htaccess route -- yes, you can create a text file with those rules in it and then rename it to .htaccess and upload it to the correct directory. Make sure that you do not have a .txt extension on it though!

RandomFan — Thu, 01 Apr 2004 02:02:57 +0000

Greg K wrote: You could still do this, and then set it up so that the file will only be displayed if the user came from a link within your forum. I had soemthing similar on a client's art site. I had teh following in the .htaccess file for the directory housing all the art images:

Thanks alot, this just might do the trick -- I have never created an .htaccess file before...

Do I just put that stuff in a *.TXT file, rename is .htacess, and FTP it do the directory holding the stuff I want to protect?

Thanks!

Greg K — Wed, 31 Mar 2004 23:05:23 +0000

Quote: I figured an easy solution would be to set a certain discussion group in my message board to members only, then have the URL's in posts there.

You could still do this, and then set it up so that the file will only be displayed if the user came from a link within your forum. I had soemthing similar on a client's art site. I had teh following in the .htaccess file for the directory housing all the art images:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(www\.)?domainname.com/.*$ [NC]
RewriteRule \.(gif|jpg)$ <a href="http://www.domainname.com/bad_access.gif" class="bb-url">http://www.domainname.com/bad_access.gif</a> [R,L]

This was a FreeBSD server running apache. So you could on the 4th line change it to match something for your messageboard ie:
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(www\.)?forums.domainname.com/.*$ [NC]'
or
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(www\.)?domainname.com/forums/.*$ [NC]'(Basically find a patern that would match all URLs from your message board)

Then in the 4th line, you modify the list of extentions to protect and specify what file to give out if they are not calling it from the correct location, ie:
RewriteRule \.(gif|jpg|wma|wav|mp3)$ <a href="http://www.domainname.com/bad_access.gif" class="bb-url">http://www.domainname.com/bad_access.gif</a> [R,L]'

Suzanne — Wed, 31 Mar 2004 20:10:16 +0000

I wish I could help you further, however protecting the directory and reading your logs would be the best interim solution, though clearly time consuming. I'm wondering what you offer for download that would be so popular and yet you wouldn't charge for it.

RandomFan — Wed, 31 Mar 2004 20:01:33 +0000

Suzanne wrote: Any file in a protected directory is protected -- what control panel do you have?

The downside is you'll have to set the username/password for each person.

My site is hosted w/ Globat and the control panel they use is called The Globat Command Console. It looks like there is a "Web protect" option that can password protect directories...
I'm not sure this would work, though -- first off, I would have to set up a registration form that would be emailed to me, then manually add the account through the Command Console, then respond to each email telling them that their account is live. This could be quite time-consuming, as I am expecting that initially, I could have hundreds of accounts being activated...
Also, I wouldn't be able to match usernames to downloads, so preventing abuse would be impossible (As I would have no idea who's account to delete, it could literally be ANY ONE of the accounts)...

I read on the PUMA site (one of the scripts that I had tried) that they were working on file support... Surely SOME script has already accomplished what I am trying to do without limitation on file types? I really can't wait for a script to be updated to include what I'm trying to do... The files are an essential part of my site and have already been down for a week or so.

Thank you for all your help!

Suzanne — Wed, 31 Mar 2004 19:35:16 +0000

Any file in a protected directory is protected -- what control panel do you have?

The downside is you'll have to set the username/password for each person.

RandomFan — Wed, 31 Mar 2004 19:16:32 +0000

Suzanne wrote: paypal allows each person to have a special code key, so does bitpass.

Thanks for your reply -- the thing is, I am not charging for content... Everything on my site is free, but I just need a way to regulate the downloads so that they won't get abused.

I forgot to mention that I figured an easy solution would be to set a certain discussion group in my message board to members only, then have the URL's in posts there. However, this and some other password protection things I've seen on the web do little to protect the file itself. So that means that if somebody gave somebody else the URL, they could access the file without any sort of username attached to them (Which I am trying to avoid...)

Thanks alot.

Suzanne — Wed, 31 Mar 2004 04:18:32 +0000

paypal allows each person to have a special code key, so does bitpass.