Hey guys,

I have a very basic question regarding htaccess. I know that htaccess can password protect directories from being viewed, however my needs are to password protect files which arent scriptable webpages, such as a jpeg or pdf file.

What im after is to prevent users from typing in the absolute url of the document eg www.mysite.com, and retrieve the file without authentication.

Can htaccess provide this?

Thanks,
- Justin

Are you trying to keep people from say linking to your pictures from there website. Like adding a picture to there front page that is on your server not a link to it but the picture itself?

If this is the case and people are 'hotlinking' to your image files.
You can stop this from happening by placing a '.htaccess' file in the folder where your images are stored. This will only allow requests from your own pages to display the images - anyone linking to them from outside of your website, or any website you choose, will have the 'red x' instead of the image.

__________________
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization.

What control panel does you webhost provide? You can easily password protect a directory and then put all these files in there.

__________________
Web Hosting Tips | Career Advice

Of course you can do this with some PHP too.

Just save the "protected" downloadable files to a directory OUTSIDE your WWW root folder. This just ensures that no one can simply type in an address and have access to the files.

However, if they login as members, you could offer them the files to be downloaded.

I remember a very long time ago, I was interested in such a feature -- let me look for the thread now....

Ah! here it is: http://www.gidforums.com/t-553.html. Ignore the fact that I was discussing .tar.gz files then. It could also have been .gif or .jpeg files i.e. same idea.

__________________
J de Silva
Learning Journal | GIDForums™ | GIDNetwork™ | GIDWebhosts™ | GIDSearch™