How Can I Protect Uploads Folder Wordpress

Looking for the best way to protect WordPress media files? Nosotros'll show y'all how to protect media files with WordPress features & plugins!

Approximate read-time: 5 minutes

Looking for ways to protect WordPress media files? We'll show y'all how to protect media files with WordPress features & plugins!

File sharing is one of the best ways to grow a concern or expand an online audition. But sometimes y'all don't want to share all your files with anybody. This is where yous need to use WordPress to protect media files from existence shared in ways you don't desire.

Peradventure you have gated content that is for paid users or members? Possibly you want to apply WordPress to password protect media files on your site? Well, today we are going to show yous four ways to protect file access on your WordPress site.

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The adept news? You'll just need one plugin to exercise it all: a WordPress form builder called Formidable Forms. Using these methods, you lot tin can use WordPress to protect PDF files & more. Actually, you can protect uploaded PDF documents, audio files, images - anything in your media library!

How does Formidable Forms protect your files?

Before we testify you lot a few ways to protect your files using WordPress, we want to tell you a bit about how file protection works in Formidable Forms. Although we've always been large on file protection, our September 2020 update has taken things to the adjacent level!

Prior to this update, Formidable had an option to protect your files already, but information technology just worked for users running WordPress on an Apache server. That would encompass about WordPress websites, merely left out those sites using NGINX servers, which includes WPEngine sites for instance.

Besides calculation NGINX support, this update enhances file protection by locking direct file access to everyone (by creating URLs that aren't guessable). It also adds an choice to add together role restrictions so a file tin can only exist downloaded by specific user roles.

Formidable Forms likewise prevents files from being indexed by Google (and other search engines). This means your files will never announced in any web search.

Now that nosotros've got that out of the way, nosotros're going to evidence you four dissimilar ways to use WordPress & Formidable to protect your media files.

i. Use WordPress to countersign protect files

Did you know you can password protect media files in WordPress without any extra plugins? This method is really simple, just it won't prevent anyone from simply sharing the URL of the file you want to share.

Still, this is a very quick way to restrict admission to a postal service or folio contains a link to the files you lot want to protect. Here's how it works:

1. Create a new WordPress post or page
2. Re-create and paste a link from your media uploads directory
3. Edit the page or post Visibility to Password protected
4. Choose a password and update

That's it! Now users can but enter the countersign to access the page & files.

Since this volition merely be a direct link to your wp-content/uploads directory, it won't be very secure. If somebody tin guess the password to the folio, or if somebody shares the link, your files could exist at risk.

two. Apply WordPress to protect files based on user roles

Some other way to use WordPress to restrict access to media files? Only let certain user roles to access them. This tin be useful in a variety of ways:

For example, you could but let administrator roles to view all uploaded media files. You could also forbid users from viewing/editing their own file uploads. The almost simple option would be to foreclose direct access to everyone except logged in users.

By default, WordPress has the following user roles: Administrator, Editor, Author, Contributor, and Subscriber. Of form, restricting file access based on user roles is kind of tricky unless you lot have a plugin like Formidable Forms to help!

Not only can you cull which users can access which files, only Formidable as well includes an avant-garde user registration addition to make the WordPress user arrangement much more dynamic.

3. Restrict content for members only

Of course, you can take the previous concept to the next level past using a WordPress membership plugin (like MemberPress for instance). If you're not certain about using one of those, cheque out our commodity on the topic: How to Know When You lot Need a Membership Plugin.

A membership plugin will permit you to protect pages, posts, individual files, and more, based on a user's membership level. The but downside is that membership plugins are often expensive. Unremarkably, you'd only utilize one if you are running a defended membership website.

4. Create a form to protect WordPress files

With Formidable, you tin create a class to and upload your files with our file upload field. So you can use WordPress to prevent direct access to uploads with the "protect all files" characteristic in Formidable.

Simply put, every file you upload with this grade will be virtually invisible to all users, members of search engines (unless you choose otherwise).

And if you desire to provide the most secure admission to these protected files, a download button won't cut it. But the guide to crave email to download protected files volition help. It shows how to check if a user has access to the files.

Why use a defended file protection plugins for WordPress when you could use Formidable Forms?

Finally, you can protect content by requiring a form submission before viewing. Nosotros call this the prove page content feature. You tin can marker the page as Individual, making it inaccessible to users, merely the content from that folio tin still exist used in the success message. And then you would just need to put your files there for some other layer of protection!

Wrapping up

If you want to use WordPress for private media file management, we hope this commodity has left you inspired! For more tips on file uploads & WordPress, stay tuned to the Formidable blog. Until side by side fourth dimension, have a great day!

Read more than of our file upload posts

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Source: https://formidableforms.com/protect-wordpress-media-files/

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