Secure(ish) File Download

Information wants to be free. Bandwidth wants to be expensive.

Secure(ish) File Download prevents unauthorised downloading of files on your WordPress website.

There is no interface, simply use a WordPress shortcode to offer a range of file downloads on your site.

Examples

The simplest shortcode possible is to specify only the file attribute:

[secure_download file="http://example.com/file.zip"/]

This will output a Download link for which a user must be logged in to access.

The value of the file attribute can be either an absolute path on your file system or a URL to a file.

If you would like the file to begin download automatically, add an id and auto_download attribute. The auto_download attribute should be a time is seconds longer than 0 that specifies the period to wait before commencing the download.

[secure_download id="ego" auto_download="3000" file="http://example.com/file.zip" ]The file should begin downloading automatically after 3 seconds. If it does not, click here.[/secure_download]

To remove the authentication requirement, you can set the login_required attribute to false.

[secure_download login_required="false" file="http://example.com/file.zip"]Download via hashed URL[/secure_download]

This will make the download accessible by all users.

To obscure the filename in the download URL, set the hash_permalink attribute to "true".

[secure_download hash_permalink="true" file="http://example.com/file.zip"]Download via hashed URL[/secure_download]

This will change the download URL from http://example.com/secure-download/file.zip to something like http://example.com/secure-download/97386dcaf6711efe4d3af808f5dc09ce. As the hash does not change over time, this has arguable value in securing your files.

Installation

1. Unzip and upload /secureish-file-download/ to the /wp-content/plugins/ directory
2. Activate the plugin through the 'Plugins' menu in WordPress
3. Add a [secure_download] shortcode to your pages or posts (see example shortcodes for details)