Member area download page

I belong to a hiking club with 700 odd members (keyword odd) that publishes a hard copy guide for the Appalachian Trail with is sold to the public.

We want to offer the PDF free to members online through our website. What's the best, cheapest, free is better, approach?

 

Easiest way to do it is just to create a .htaccess in your web server that only authenticates your members with a password, and link to that. If they don't have a password, they can't download it.

But it depends on how your website is set up, and so on. LOTS of variables go into it. So you have two options... time to educate yourself and do a lot of reading, or think about looking into hiring the services of a web admin with these questions. It shouldn't take more than an hour or three of work to set that up from what you've described.

 

There's really no money for a professional and it's a terribly antiquated website with a volunteer that's been webmaster for the past 15 years. He's revamping it now and I have no idea what it will look like once he's finished. I suppose if I can come up with something, I'll be able to gain access to implement a member area. Thanks

 

Your volunteer webmaster should be able to set up an htaccess protected directory. Ask him about it.

 

Or, a less elegant but even simpler method is to just password protect the PDF file - members without the password to the file cannot open it.