How to secure a download folder with the Lookup Stack?

Classic General
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I seem to lack enough of my mind today to solve the following issue:

On a website for a client I need to make a dozen files downloadable for team members.

In my search for alternatives to Lockdown I came across the Lookup stack from S4S. I purchased it but cannot get it working. Maybe I am totally mistaken and the stack works only with individual files and not with a page???

Here is my testsite: http://arm.rathmair.eu/

How can I make the docs in the Formulare folder available with a password? (One password for all the docs in the folder, nicht one password for each individual file).

I would appreciate some wise counsel to enlighten me. Thanks!

PS: What irritates me with Lookup stack is that I can’t find a way to identify the “missing” part anywhere. The stack itself is not clickable, I can’t write anything into the window inside that stack.

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Hi Franz,

I don’t think I would personally consider Lookup stack to be an alternative to @isaiah’s Lockdown plugin. Lookup stack cannot really be used to password-protect entire sections of a website. I didn’t really design it for that job.

The purpose of Lockup is clearly presented to you here on my product page, along with working demo’s and a free demo version of the stack to download and try before buying:

So assuming you had a file named my file.pdf stored in http://arm.rathmair.eu/Formulare, you could easily setup the stack so that the word Formulare is the passcode.

Your settings would look like this:

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[Click to see an enlarged view].

And the extension to /file.pdf

The word ‘Formulare’ becomes your passcode. Why? Becasue that is the word needed to complete the address and link the user to the PDF file:

http://arm.rathmair.eu/Formulare/file.pdf

Of course the stack is not going to function fully in edit mode. :slight_smile:

Like a lot of stacks, you need to press the ‘preview’ button in the RapidWeaver window to see how the completed webpage will look and function.

It sounds like you are very new to Stacks and RapidWeaver. As much as I appreciate your purchases and support for my work, I would urge you to perhaps please familiarize yourself first with the basics of using Stacks and RapidWeaver, like toggling between edit and preview modes:

As a side note, you should consider protecting your website with an SSL certificate (so all page addresses start https://) and use a convention of lower-case folder / file names. I only mention this because some web browsers (like Chrome) complain if they see forms or password input boxes on insecure websites.

There is an update planned for Lookup stack, but it doesn’t really change the functionality of the stack much. Mostly this free update will be adding some new style settings that existing users have asked me for.

I am experimenting with bringing the old Sentry stack back to RapidWeaver too, and re-releasing it as a major update. This would allow an entire webpage to be password-protected. Perhaps more suited to what you want to do?

But I have run into technical problems with getting this stack to preview correctly in RapidWeaver. Ideally I wanted to provide the new stack so that users have the ability to fully test their login system “live” in RapidWeaver Preview. So it is hard to put an ETA on this one currently, assuming these problems can be overcome.

I hope this information and the links help you.

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Hi Will,

thank you very much for taking so much time to respond to my post. I appreciate that very much.

I may sound like I am new to Rapidweaver, but this is not the case. I work with this software since 10 or more years. But from time to time I run into a situation where I am at my wits’ end.
Using your lookup stack is such a situation.

I do feel quite stupid right now: Even with your explanation I can’t make it happen. Some piece of information is missing for me. Where / How do you put the file.pdf into the folder “Formulare” as you say? Maybe I am totally out of my mind today, but do I have to visit with my FTP programe the folder on the server and drop this file into it? If I offer a file for download, I put it into the resources folder and make a link to it. I am really puzzled…

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Hi Franz,

I’m still unclear what you are trying to secure.

The forum title suggests a “download folder”. With that, I envisage a .zip package containing one or more files. Lookup can protect this for you.

But your opening discussion is then mentioning trying to secure a folder on the web server and one password for all the webpages or files contained within. Lookup cannot do this.

It might be quicker and easier to reach me by email and provide more information and sample links. I’m guessing there is stuff you do not want to disclose on these forums. Ideally I need the full picture, to help understand what you want.

You could use Lookup with files or folders you add as resources in RapidWeaver. The base URL would always be something like https://example.com/resources/folder_name/. To change it to be something other than ‘resources’, you probably would need to manully FTP the files / folders into place.

-Will.

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Hi Will,

I am sorry that I didn’t express myself well enough. English is not my native language.

What I want/need is password protection for a file sharing page. With one password I get access to the page where x number of forms and documents are available for individual download.

As you describe, this is not something your lookup stack was built to do. That is OK, maybe I can use it sometime in the future for individual files stored in a resoure folder.

Thanks for your patience and help.

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@Franz You can accomplish what you want quite easily with a password stack or password app. The question would be how do you share the password with relevant folks. But the simplest solution I know of right now is by Joe Workman and is named PageSafe. It works really well.

For more complicated setups there is SiteLok which is not a stack, but works very well with RW.

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@Mathew Thanks for your suggestion. I am in possesion of the Lockdown addon (or whatever it is called) and was able to get it working for the filesharing page. But if I need a tool for more complex needs, I would most likely go with Sitelok.

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