Hiding download links?

Regular Joined: Oct 15, 2005 Posts: 80

We host on our RavenNuke76(tm) Version 2.02.02 site, mp3' and some sites (mostly German for some odd reason) are linking back to the folder the files are stored in so people are downloading them and even streaming them on there own site via us. Now as you can imagine the usage on site is going through the roof.

When you go to downloads and click on the link and it starts playing it discloses the file location in the address bar, is there anyway for people to download/play these files while hiding the location in the address bar?

Thanks guys.

registered · Posted: Sat Apr 22, 2006 3:16 pm

OK, this is a long thread here, but it is a good one.

http://www.ravenphpscripts.com/postx8505-75-0.html

About half-way through, there is a good recommendation on how to do it and I even give the approach if you are using NSN Group Downloads. So far so good...

Posted: Sat Apr 22, 2006 5:17 pm

Ok that looks good, il have a play and see how it goes, thanks Very Happy

Posted: Sat Apr 22, 2006 5:59 pm

Not working, I think it's our server, that code looks like it should work fine.
But I have tryed using other Rewrite codes before and non of them work, i think the server we use dosnt suport it, it just comes up with in an internal server error.

Posted: Sun Apr 23, 2006 7:17 am

Actually, I would not use the rewrite code. There is a better solution that works further down in the thread. You basically change your downloads links to be file system relative (not using the http://....) and then modify your download code slightly to have PHP basically stream the download rather than using a regular browser link and then you make a .htaccess file in your download's folder to stop direct access to the files from the web. PHP will be able to read the file and stream it back to the browser.