Members area to view / download their own documents
Author: Andy A.
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Hi All.
I am looking for guidance on creating a members area where our clients can log into their own area and download and or view a series of PDF documents ?
Any help much appreciated.
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Hello Andy,
would these documents be different from user to user, or would you need to give access to the same set of documents?
Eric
Author
Hi Eric.
These would be user specific.
We have a set of PDF documents which we send to our customers which are for each individual and rather than printing them out and sending in a file we are looking at the possibility of each customer being able to download their own and print them off themselves therefor would need an individual passworded access to get these if possible.
Kind regards
Andy
Hello Andy,
in this case a separate page for each user would need to be created as a protected page to which only that specific user has access, and containing the relevant files for that users.
The page should also be specified as the Entrance Page for the user.
Eric
Eric
Author
Hi Eric.
Excellent, I think this will work for us.
One last pointer... how do I get a link for them to download the files ?
Thanks
Andy
Hello,
the PDF File object has an option to download the file and not only view it, and you can also use the Download Button or create a download link through text.
Eric
Author
Hi.
I can set a link to a file on the link section but cant get rid of the pop up box / showbox / window ec.
Andy
Hello Andy,
what do you mean? Do you have a screenshot?
Eric
Author
Hi Eric.
Hello Andy,
with the Button object you can create a link to display the file, but the download would need to be done manually from the file viewer that will then open.
If you want to create a button that instantly downloads the file, you would instead need to use the Download Button object, or create something similar with the HTML Code objectm, using guides such as https://www.w3schools.com/howto/howto_html_download_link.asp
Eric
Author
Moring Eric.
Many thanks for the tips. I will implement this today, and all suggestions etc greatly appreciated. This will now enable us to proceed with the project of letting our customers download their on documentation.
Kind regards
Andy
****Beware - the restricted pages on y restrict acces to the php-pages. The documents (PDF) will be available for ALL. The content of the PDF's could be shown in Google results or another search engines result. And then ALL will have access to the document.
You should use a better way to handle this. It could be done by a document system or be making folders for each customer and then password protect these folders. You must find a good way to let the user download to "his" own folder - and as it is the user that downloads the documents there is no button where he can come in contach with his "own" documents. So again - maybe a document system will be the best solution.
Unless you don't care for the security of your clients documents.
Examples:
https://www.phpjabbers.com/file-sharing-script/ not free but handy
https://www.cloudwards.net/free-document-management-software/ and many others
Author
We are going down the route of each client having their own folder and also a passwordrd zip file containing all their documents.
OK - have you then considered using .htaccess?
https://www.lcn.com/support/articles/how-to-password-protect-a-folder-on-your-website-with-htaccess/
This is very secure when done properly, and no need for zip, which could be cracked.
The protected zip-solution is pretty good as it does not make the documents content open for bots and the passw. protection makes the document partly protected. And the protected pages makes it difficult to find documents.
So a rather good solution, I think
(It > En) ... ... if you are interested, with a very simple invention of mine you can directly use the normal program connection window to perform the direct download of the PDF file, in which case let me know...
.. if you want you could also put two buttons, "view PDF" | "download PDF"...
... if it is really necessary the PDF file can be generated protected with the same user password...
.
ciao
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