We have a web site where my wife has posted many articles that have been available to anyone who clicks on them. She has now published a book in the same topics, and we want a way that someone clicking on a link for a particular article has to enter their e-mail address (or maybe click “no thanks”) before they can access the article. How can I do this in Express?
You could do this by using the Spawn New Window action that opens a pop-up that has a form in it to gather the email address and whose success page is the page/file that they originally clicked the link for.
It would mean a new form for each link but that would be just a case of duplicating the form page and changing the success page destination for each.
The easiest way to do this without any programming is with a hidden link. (It’s not a perfect solution, but it doesn’t require any programming from you.) Set up a PHP Feedback Form on your download page, and put the link to the download on the Success page configured in the PHPFF Action.
If you have a bunch of different files you want to secure, another way is with a bit of custom programming. For a real-life example, visit this page: http://www.tgas.com/view/455/white_papers Hover your mouse over any of the links in the middle of the page – you’ll see they go to the actual files they represent. You’ll also notice that the files all appear to be in the /downloads/ folder (which is true, they are). Now click on one of the links. You’ll see a little form where you can enter your info. If you fill it out, you can then download anything you want for a year (a cookie is set on your browser, and if you visit from another browser, it will ask you again but it won’t duplicate your record in the database). Each time you download something, it gets marked down on your record, so the boffins at TGaS can figure out what you’re interested in and sell you the appropriate services.
Here’s how this works:
All the download files are put in a single folder.
Also in that folder is an .htaccess file that redirects all requests for anything to a single PHP file.
That PHP file reads the browser cookies, figures out if the visitor has signed in in the last year, and acts appropriately.
After the visitor has registered, the file is sent. All subsequent requests go through this process transparently (the file just seems to download).
If you’re interested in this approach, and have some PHP experience, I’ll post the files on Gist for dissection.
Walter
On Jun 29, 2012, at 3:03 AM, DeltaDave wrote:
You could do this by using the Spawn New Window action that opens a pop-up that has a form in it to gather the email address and whose success page is the page/file that they originally clicked the link for.
It would mean a new form for each link but that would be just a case of duplicating the form page and changing the success page destination for each.
Thanks Waltd and DeltaDavid. I am using Express, so I guess I can’t use Spawn New Window. With no PHP experience (what is PHP? I guess waltd’s second suggestion, while exactly what I had in mind, is not going to happen. I am going to look into using forms, though. I have been testing an “ad” page, where clicking on the link brings up a page which is an ad and encourages people to click on a link to send an e-mail. At the bottom is the link to their requested doc.
I believe the PHP Feedback Form Action is encoded so both Express and Pro users can use it. (One of few third-party Actions to be so encoded, so enjoy it!). What you would do is create a page that has your branding and the form on it, maybe call it downloads.html. Create another page, initially called success.html, just to keep it straight in your head. On this page, put some cheery “Thanks for signing up, we promise not to spam you into oblivion” text, as well as a link to each file you wish to offer for download. Also make an error page, for anyone who doesn’t enter their e-mail address. Back on your form page, apply the PHP Feedback Form Action to the page, and configure it to use the error page and success page you just created. Make sure your form contains at minimum two text fields, named precisely name and email – lower-case, no other names will do. You apply the name to a form field by clicking once on it, looking in the Inspector at the third tab from the left for the Name field. Don’t confuse this with the Title field in the first tab of the Inspector, which is meaningless in this context. With those two fields and a Submit button, your form is complete, and should work on most servers.
Walter
On Jun 29, 2012, at 11:11 AM, Laird Brown wrote:
Thanks Waltd and DeltaDavid. I am using Express, so I guess I can’t use Spawn New Window. With no PHP experience (what is PHP? I guess waltd’s second suggestion, while exactly what I had in mind, is not going to happen. I am going to look into using forms, though. I have been testing an “ad” page, where clicking on the link brings up a page which is an ad and encourages people to click on a link to send an e-mail. At the bottom is the link to their requested doc.
I guess waltd’s second suggestion, while exactly what I had in mind, is not going to happen. I am going to look into using forms, though. I have been testing an “ad” page, where clicking on the link brings up a page which is an ad and encourages people to click on a link to send an e-mail. At the bottom is the link to their requested doc.