Under your WordPress admin dashboard, click on “Prevent Direct Access Gold” menu in the left sidebar to configure its settings.
Contents
FILE PROTECTION
(1) Auto-protect New File Uploads
Enable this option for our Gold version to automatically protect all your new file uploads.
In case you want to protect certain file types or file uploads by specific user roles only, simply select them from the dropdown lists as below.
(2) Set File Access Permission
Allow you to choose who can access your protected files by default. User roles options include:
- Admin users (by default)
- The file’s author
- Logged-in users
- No one (means no person is allowed to access your private files)
- Anyone (means our plugin only blocks search indexing)
- Custom Roles
When you “choose custom roles”, a new “Grant access to these user roles only” option will appear, which allows you to select multiple user roles such as authors, subscribers, and contributors. Only these user roles will be able to access your private files.
(3) Customize “No Access” Page
Allow you to select which page, post or even a custom link to display when users have no access to your protected files or when they click on expired private download links. In other words, unauthorized users will be redirected to this “No Access” page.
The default “No Access” page is your website’s 404 error page.
(4) Search & Replace
This option should be enabled when you are to protect files already embedded in content.
As soon as you enable this option, “Apply to these pages or posts only” will be shown allowing you to choose which pages or posts you want to replace unprotected file URLs in content.
PRIVATE DOWNLOAD LINKS
(1) Change Download Link Prefix
Allow you to change “private” prefix of your private download links. By default, your download links look something like http://bwps.us/private/your-custom-filename. If you change “private” into “membership”, all your download links will become http://bwps.us/membership/your-custom-filename.
Please note that a valid prefix contains lowercase English letters (a-z), numbers (0-9), dash (-) and underscore (_) only.
(2) Generate Download Link Once Protected
If you enable this option, when a file is protected, our plugin will automatically create a new private download link for it. This applies to new file uploads only. Our Gold version won’t auto-generate new download links for existing protected files.
(3) Force Download
Force users to download a media file when they click its download links by enabling this option.
OTHER SECURITY OPTIONS
(1) Disable Right Click
Turn on this option to disable text selection and right-clicks on all your web pages. It makes it harder for visitors to copy your content, thus preventing content thief.
(2) Hide WordPress version
Prevent attacks that exploits known vulnerabilities on old versions of WordPress. It’s recommended to always keep your WordPress installation up-to-date.
(3) Prevent Hotlinking
Prevent other people from stealing and using your images or files without permission. It means other people cannot copy and embed your file URLs in their own websites anymore. The images won’t be displayed. Other documents won’t be accessible either.
(4) Disable Directory Listing
Turn on this option if you don’t want others to browse and view all of WordPress folders and subdirectories.
(5) Block Access to Sensitive Files
Hide all your sensitive files about your WordPress installs such as readme.html, license.txt, and wp-config-sample.php.
(6) Grant Web Crawlers Access
Enable this option to grant specific search engines and social network bots to access the protected files.
As a result, when you share a protected file URL on social media sites, the file preview will still display. So everyone can see but they won’t be able to access the file directly.
ADVANCED OPTIONS
(1) File Protection Control
Enable you to select user roles who can protect or unprotect your private files. Users without permission will still be able to see the file protection status, but there is no way to change it. By default, administrators, editors, and authors are allowed to protect or unprotect your WordPress files.
- According to WordPress roles and capabilities, Authors are only allowed to publish and manage their own posts by default, and so, protect or unprotect their own files
- This File Protection Control (FPC) doesn’t interfere with the auto-protection of new media files feature. For example, if you set all file uploads by editors to be auto-protected as well as remove editors from this FPC, any files uploaded by editors will still be auto-protected.
(2) Enable Debug Logs
Turn on this option when you get into trouble with our plugin and want us to debug and troubleshoot the issues for you. No personal and sensitive data is tracked. Refer to What happens when enabling Debug Logs?
(3) Keep Raw URLs
Consider using our Raw URLs with these limitations when you’re using WordPress.com or Nginx-based hostings that don’t support rewrite rules modifications.
For Nginx servers that also support .htaccess rewrite rules such as Flywheel and Cloudways, our Raw URLs and file protection will work as expected without any limitations.
Once enabled, your download links, for example, will become something like https://pda.com/index.php?pda_v3_pf=5bb4413c476b8&pdav3_rexypo=ymerexy,
instead of http://pda.com/private/5bb4413c476b8 as normal.
Similarly, the protected links are changed as well:
- Default URL: https://pda.com/wp-content/uploads/_pda/2019/12/happy-fly.gif
- Raw URL: https://pda.com/index.php?pda_v3_pf=/_pda/2019/12/happy-fly.gif
(4) Download Large-size Files
Enable this option to avoid timeout issues when downloading large-size files. This option will be integrated into our cores (turned on by default) in the upcoming versions.
(5) Remove Data Upon Uninstall
By default, we will remove all our plugin’s database tables upon deletion of our plugin. If this option is enabled, your license and ALL related data will also be removed from the database upon uninstall. Your license may NOT be used on this website again or elsewhere anymore.
Remember to click “Save changes” to update your settings preferences.
