Encrypted Access Link

Hey everyone,

So I was just thinking about Squarespace and the website I'm building for my wife. We provide downloads for Free to subscribers to her newsletter, and since there is a few of them we deemed it worthy to have a page dedicated to downloading them. Now, instead of us having to have members with their own unique passwords to make sure people can't just share the password or link, I was thinking of creating Access Links to the page. This means that they can get a link to get through the password of the page which is unique to them. 

The link in the browser currently with password would be:

www.website.com/free-downloads

What I want with a Random Access Link:

www.website.com/free-downloads?pw=aZ19djakFR1958sa

If the user tried to share the URL for the page, because it's not being accessed through the link, it should reject them. This would be because you would would encrypt the links password so that when you click on it, the password is generated anew with the algorithm and the old password is no longer valid as it's already been used. 

I know there are various plugins available for WordPress for Access Links, however. I'm not aware of there being any plugins or code available for Squarespace and creating a system like this. I'm not ever sure how easy it would be unless you fully coded the page yourself. I know there is the password protection for pages, but in my opinion this is a very weak system, and member pages for Free Downloads is beyond the scope of what this should be, nor a viable choice when you want to give people quick and easy access to what they were promised without having to jump through hoops.

Is there any resources or ideas anyone has for this?

Thanks everyone 🙂

If you add the downloads as free Digital Products, visitors will be able to go through the checkout to download them. Unique expiring links are currently created for Digital Products.

@paul2009 When the website was created on 7.0 I had products for the free downloads. But since I'm redesigning the web page and remaking it all for 7.1 I want to try and get better features in for the consumers of my content.

As products in the store, as much as it is useful, it's really not great for the amount of clicks, forms to fill in and pages they have to wade through. Also, if the user goes through the checkout, there is no requirement that they join the email list and I can't just force them into it through checkout, which is really the driving point of the free products. I'm also not wanting to do it directly through the newsletter as that gets people off the website. I want to keep them somewhere on the web page on a password protected page where they can download the content they want. But at the same time, have other content there to consume, such as paid content. 

52 minutes ago, TheWIldHaggis said:

As products in the store, as much as it is useful, it's really not great for the amount of clicks, forms to fill in and pages they have to wade through. Also, if the user goes through the checkout, there is no requirement that they join the email list and I can't just force them into it through checkout.

I understand.

Member Areas is a feature that will allow you to encourage signup to see protected content on your site and be added to your mailing list, but there isn't a way to protect files stored on Squarespace yet (you can protect on-page content, but not file attachments), or to create access links in the way that you describe.