Hi guys my newest site is selling an ebook and after customers have paid I want them to automatically downlad the file with the ebook in. However once the URL that the download comes from is know by one person, they can tell everyone else and they will be able to download it for free. Does anybody know of any way to protect these downloads so that you can only download the file if it has been paid for. Thanks, Jonathan
Jonathan: I use a PayPal Buy Now button on my site for purchasing the download of several .zip files. I will sell you the PHP/JavaScript code that I use on my site, and help you get it up and running, for $100.00. It includes a password protected "Try Again" page, for those who exit PayPal without clicking the "Return to Merchant" link, or exit the download page, believing that they can save the URL and come back later. No database is used. A visitor to the download page must be "authenticated" prior to being permitted to download my code, thereby preventing any others who learn the URL from being able to download my code.
There's a site, dlguard.com that seems to be popular, a lot of marketers swear by it. I use an application that stores the downloads below the public_html directory & copies the file to a unique location that is created once a purchase is made, then a few minutes after the download is accessed, the copied file is deleted from the server. . . it uses cron & mysql & it's written in .cgi. My app isn't exactly ready to be sold commercially as I just hack the code to make it work on different servers & for different purposes (support multiple downloads, etc). You could probably hire someone to write something for you, or, as I've stated, a lot of marketers really love dlguard.
Yeah it's called symlinks - links which will expire after given amount of time (cronjob). Why don't you try using Joomla and virtuemart - at least it's for free and does not require any programming skills.