Wilson Mattos » Tutorials http://www.wilsonmattos.com Providing Technology Solutions Sun, 11 Jul 2010 20:21:21 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 en hourly 1 How to Protect Clickbank Product Download Pages http://www.wilsonmattos.com/how-to-protect-clickbank-product-download-pages http://www.wilsonmattos.com/how-to-protect-clickbank-product-download-pages#comments Tue, 20 Oct 2009 07:24:57 +0000 Wilson Mattos http://www.wilsonmattos.com/?p=149

In a previous post, I talked about How to Automate AWeber Opt-in for Clickbank Sales, and I mentioned that it is a good idea (silly if you don’t) protect your download pages to ensure only legitimate customers who paid for your product can download it.

When I say “protect” your download pages, I do NOT mean create a crazy looking URL hoping nobody can “guess” it.  This is called “attempted security by obscurity” and it does NOT work!  All it takes is for someone to post the URL to your download page somewhere on the Internet and your “supposed security” is broken!  The worse part happens when that link is posted on a public page somewhere and Google finds it, indexes it, and makes it available to anyone who can perform a Google search.  Still think your crazy-named download URLs are secure?

I have received many questions since I wrote my last article on how to truly protect the download page, so I decided to write this brief tutorial.  Although there are several products you can purchase to protect you downloads, this method does not require that you purchase anything at all…it’s FREE!

This is not something I invented. In fact, this is clearly documented on the Clickbank site. However, sometimes it just helps if someone explains it a little differently…so here it is. :-)

Step 1. Setup Your Clickbank Secret Key

The “Secret Key” is used to encrypt information generated by the Clickbank shopping cart regarding the purchase so that you can validate it before displaying your download page as you will see shortly.  Make absolutely certain that this key is very random and is kept very secure!!!

1.  Login to your Clickbank account

2. Click on the “Account Settings” tab

3. Click “My Site” on the sub-menu, below the tabs

4. Scroll down to the “Advanced Tools” section and click “Edit”

5. Enter a random “Secret Key” (up to 16 numbers and letters in ALL CAPS)

6. Copy this key as you will need it in the next section

Step 2. Edit Your Download Page

You will need to edit your download page using your favorite text or HTML editor.  In order to make life simpler and avoid additional steps, your page should have a “.php” extension.  I name my pages “download.php” to make it easy to remember.  Name your page whatever you think makes sense.

1. Put this code at the very top of your page

Note: I mean the VERY TOP…there should be nothing above it (not even a blank line).

<?php

function cbValid() {
   $key='YOUR_SECRET_KEY';
   $rcpt=$_REQUEST['cbreceipt'];
   $time=$_REQUEST['time'];
   $item=$_REQUEST['item'];
   $cbpop=$_REQUEST['cbpop'];
   $xxpop=sha1("$key|$rcpt|$time|$item");
   $xxpop=strtoupper(substr($xxpop,0,8));

   if ($cbpop==$xxpop) {
      return 1;
   } else {
      return 0;
   }
}

if (cbValid() == "0") {
   header("Location: http://YOUR_SALES_PAGE_URL");
}
?>

2. In the sample code above, replace YOUR_SECRET_KEY with the “Secret Key” you created above

3. In the sample code above, replace YOUR_SALES_PAGE_URL with the URL you want to redirect anyone who tries to reach your download page without having purchased your product. I typically set this to my sales page URL.

4. OPTIONAL: Edit the <head> section of your page and add the following META tag to ensure the search engines don’t index it:

Note: this is optional because the search engines will never be able to reach your download page, but is just an extra measure in case “something” goes wrong.

<meta name="ROBOTS" content="NOINDEX,NOFOLLOW">

5. Save your download page and upload it to your server

6. Set the new download page URL as the “Thank You Page” in your Clickbank product configuration

Important Next Steps…

Once you implement the above procedure your download page will be secure! Anyone trying to access it without actually making a purchase will be redirected to the URL you configured in the script above.  Try it yourself by just typing the URL in the browser and seeing what happens.

Protecting the download page from prying eyes is great, but you also need to protect the file download link, or that link can be shared as well and your efforts from above will be in vain.  Again, there are products to do this, but with some simple PHP code, you can do it for free.  I will save that tutorial for another post.  However, I will tell you that I use Amazon S3 to store and deliver my downloadable products.  If you are interested in learning more about how to use Amazon S3 to store and deliver content securely (including streaming video, images, downloadable files, etc), you can check out my Amazon S3 Tutorial Webinar Recording, which teaches everything you need to know about using Amazon S3 securely in just one hour.

]]> http://www.wilsonmattos.com/how-to-protect-clickbank-product-download-pages/feed 7 How to Automate AWeber Opt-in for Clickbank Sales http://www.wilsonmattos.com/how-to-automate-aweber-opt-in-for-clickbank-sales http://www.wilsonmattos.com/how-to-automate-aweber-opt-in-for-clickbank-sales#comments Thu, 03 Sep 2009 06:25:27 +0000 Wilson Mattos http://www.wilsonmattos.com/?p=85

This post has been removed at the request of AWeber.

For instructions on how to integrate Clickbank with AWever, please see these instructions on the AWeber site.