File downloads for authorized users
Groups File Access is a WordPress plugin that allows to provide file download links for authorized users. Access to files is restricted to users by their group membership.
- Provide file downloads for Premium Members.
- Allow registered users to download files from your site.
Features
- Restrict access to downloads to authorized user groups
- Full multisite support (WordPress network installations)
- File management area
- Upload files via FTP and bulk import
- File access notifications (customizable)
- Flexible shortcodes: [groups_can_access_file], [groups_can_not_access_file], [groups_file_info], [groups_file_url], [groups_file_link], [groups_file_visibility], [groups_file_access_service_key]
- Limited or unlimited number of downloads per user
- Key authentication file access
Access to files is restricted by group membership. To be able to download a file, a user must be a member of a group that is assigned to the file. If an access limit has been set for the file, the user must also have accessed (downloaded) the file fewer times than the file’s access limit.
If you want to restrict access to a file to users that belong to a certain group, create the group, add the desired users to the group and assign the group to the files that the group should be able to access. More than one group can be assigned to a file.
Shortcodes are used on posts or pages to render links to files, provide information about files and conditionally show content to users depending on whether they are allowed to access a file.
For example, the [groups_file_link group="Premium"] shortcode renders links to files that members of the Premium group can click to download the files.
Downloads
See the Groups File Access product page.
The GFA PDF Viewer is a free integration with PDF Viewer.
Documentation
See the Group File Access documentation pages.
Demo
Please visit the Demo site.
When a visitor tried to download a file that is protected by Groups (Files add-on) they get a page that says “Forbidden. You don’t have permission to access this resource on this server.”
Is there a way to change this message to something less frightening to users, or preferably redirect the user to another page explaining what went wrong.
Hi Tim,
You could customize the error responses that your server issues and set up redirects, see Custom Error Responses from the Apache documentation for example.
Cheers
Are the member-protected files (such as PDFs) handled as WordPress posts? We are evaluating this plugin for a project that will restrict a large number of PDFs to various groups, and the PDFs need to be included in the site’s search results. I usually use the premium version of the Relevanssi search plugin for this, but it will only index WordPress posts (including the “attachment” post type).
Per Relevanssi’s website, “Since Relevanssi is a WordPress search, Relevanssi operates on WordPress posts (including all the different post types). So, in order to have Relevanssi index your PDFs, they need to be WordPress posts. That’s fortunately really simple: just upload your PDF files to the Media library, and they become posts with the post type of attachment.”
We have purchased and installed the Groups File Access plugin for testing, and I’m noticing (using default WordPress search) that terms in the PDF title and descriptions are not appearing in search results. Is there a method for including the protected files in the WordPress search results?
Hi Pat,
Thanks for using the extension!
> Are the member-protected files (such as PDFs) handled as WordPress posts?
No, they are held protected as the original files.
> “… just upload your PDF files to the Media library, and they become posts with the post type of attachment.”
When you upload a PDF to the media library, a post of type attachment is created which hold a link to the PDF, but that doesn’t imply that the whole PDF “becomes” an attachment post which would reflect the full content of the PDF. It will usually hold its title and link to the uploaded PDF. Whether the search plugin will handle the contents of the attachment and consider them for searches or not I don’t know. Keep in mind that even if you protect an attachment page with the Groups plugin itself (not Groups File Access), the actual attachment is still unprotected and anyone who knows the URL to the attachment can easily access it directly. Groups File Access contains the files separately (out of the Media Library) and controls access to the files to be able to protect them. See the File Access section in the documentation for details on that.
> “…that terms in the PDF title and descriptions are not appearing in search results…”
That’s correct. They are not included because they are not visible to the search unless you make their titles visible by included references or use the extension’s shortcodes to point to them in a post for example. Please have a look at the Shortcodes and Examples sections in the documentation.
Cheers
Hello
I am looking for a plugin that allow tracking of downloads from memberships. I need not only to know how many downloads for each file but also which downloads were made by each member. Is this possible with your plugin?
Hi Luis,
Thanks for asking! At the moment, the extension does not provide details on downloads per user.
Cheers
first I bought this plugin for the URL http://ppid.diskominfo.jatengprov.go.id. But why isn’t it working now? Please help me.
Hi Angga,
What exactly doesn’t seem to be working on your site?
Cheers
http://ppid.diskominfo.jatengprov.go.id/Untitled.png
I can’t upload files and on the bottom of admin page it says “Copyright itthinx – This plugin is provided subject to the license granted. Unauthorized use and distribution is prohibited.”
Sure, simply follow the instructions as documented in the Files section of the documentation.
I am unable to open any documents listed in Groups File access. The wp-content/uploads/groups-file-access folder has an empty index.html and a .htaccess file with “deny from all”. All the files are in the same group, and multiple users who belong to that group, including the admin, cannot access any of the files. The message from Chrom (Win 10) is “No webpage was found for the web address: https://www.xyz.org/?gfid=xxx“. Firefox just gives a blank page.
Running Groups Version 2.8.0, Groups File Access Version 1.6.4
This same question was asked on 11/13, 4 days ago, on https://www.itthinx.com/topic/group-file-access-forbidden-on-this-server/. I can’t figure out how to get an account so I can add to that thread.
Hi,
I would recommend to review if your server tries to apply any rewrite rules or redirects such requests instead of letting them through so the system can handle them. You might also have a conflicting plugin which removes parameters or interferes with the requests. Another issue could be related to caching, especially if you have caching enabled for users who are logged in – that should be disabled for file requests via the gfid URL parameter.
Also take into account that for nginx, the system requires a rule which is documented here: http://docs.itthinx.com/document/groups-file-access/file-access/
Cheers
Turns out the host migrated us to a different server. As a result, all the URLs in Groups Files have the old URL /home1/oranjccr/public_html/…… They need to be /home3/oranjccr/public_html/……
We have 71 files. Is there any way to make this change without redoing everything?
Hi,
Yes, this can be done in two ways:
1) Using a direct update query run on the database (as indicated in the lower section of this documentation page Moving to another Server – make sure to create a backup of your site and database before you run the query).
or
2) Scan and import files as described in the File Import section.
Cheers
there is a message: :
Copyright itthinx – This plugin is provided subject to the license granted. Unauthorized use and distribution is prohibited.
what is the cause ?, I used to buy it
Hi Angga,
Please refer to the documentation here where you will find details on how to set it up and use it to provide restricted access to files: http://docs.itthinx.com/document/groups-file-access/
Cheers
I have bought the newer version of Groups File Access but have the older version installed. However, the newer version fails to install. So how do I update the Groups File Access plugin?
Hi Robert,
Simply deactivate and delete the old version. Make sure to do that from your WordPress dashboard under Plugins > Installed Plugins. Then use Plugins > Add New to upload the new version’s zip file and activate it. Detailed steps are on http://docs.itthinx.com/document/groups-file-access/setup/
Cheers