PDA Gold Glossary
- File URLs
- Integrations
Prevent Direct Access File URLs
Original Links refer to the File URL of any media files uploaded to your WordPress website.
https://pda.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/sample-document.pdf
We call them "Unprotected Links" as they can be accessed directly by anyone as well as indexed by Google and other search engines.
https://pda.com/wp-content/uploads/_pda/2018/12/sample-document.pdf
File Access Permission (FAP) determines which user roles can access your protected media files, i.e. through their protected links, directly.
- The global FAP on our PDA Gold settings page applies the permission to all files by default
- You can also set a different FAP on each individual file:
- The individual FAP that comes with our PDA Gold only supports "Admins" and "Authors".
- You can enable full FAP options including anyone and custom user roles with our Access Restriction extension
- Membership Integration extension allows you to integrate your custom memberships into our FAP
Please refer to our File Access Permission priority for more information.
Private Download Links, or Download Links, are generated by our PDA plugin providing you with an alternative way to access your protected files. While they aren't indexed by Google and other search engines, anyone with the private links will be able to access your protected files.
You can prevent others from sharing your private links by setting an expiration date or download (click) limit, That's why we also call them Expiring Download Links.
Raw Links are the actual URLs that our PDA Gold handles both original and private links. Although they look raw and ugly, Raw Links work on almost all hosting servers and platforms including Nginx and WordPress.org as they don't require server redirect.
Raw Protected File URL
Protected File URL: https://pda.com/wp-content/uploads/_pda/2018/12/sample-document.pdf vs Raw version: https://pda.com/index.php?pda_v3_pf=/_pda/2018/12/sample-document.pdf
Raw Private URL
Private URL: https://pda.com/private/protected-file vs Raw version: https://pda.com/index.php?pda_v3_pf=protected-file&pdav3_rexypo=ymerexy
These files are private, and so, not meant for SEO purposes. So Raw Links are a good fallback especially when your server doesn't allow rewrite rules modification.
As a matter of fact, using Raw Links actually speeds up the process of serving file (and file protection) as the file requests don't have to go through server rewrite rules (htaccess or Nginx redirects).
