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HTTP authentication using PHP authentication

Hi. I'm making a members area for my site and I have it already running. I authenticate members using mysql and php and this works really well.

But now problems occurs, I would like to offer members a possibility to upload files to the systems, and those files should be available ONLY to logged in members.

I know I could store those files to a database or even in a filesystem and serve them throught php, BUT this will get very heavy for the server when members upload bigger files. Those files might be even 20MB or even bigger.

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    What exactly is your question here? How to secure access to the files, or how to store them on your server? Commented Jun 18, 2010 at 14:14
  • @Eric, damn, you beat me by 4 seconds! Commented Jun 18, 2010 at 14:15
  • Don't accept sizes over a certain limit? Or upgrade your hosting plan? Commented Jun 18, 2010 at 14:15
  • Or you could try amazon cloud hosting aws.amazon.com/ec2 or your prefered cloud hosting to store the files Commented Jun 18, 2010 at 14:20

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His question is how to make those files unavailable to users who are not authenticated (I supppose).

Storing files themselves in databases is a very bad idea. Just put them in an unaccessible directory (ie: use .htaccess to restric access) and serve them using PHP. The additional load on the server in doing so (if done correctly) is minimal.

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"The additional load on the server in doing so (if done correctly) is minimal." How would one do this correctly?

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