Hi,
I would like to have my guests who visit my website be able to "download stuff" from my website, but I do not know how to set it up ? I'd like them to be able to download Files and compressed zip files etc. How do I set up my Website so that a person will be able to go to a page where they can download certain files, with permission of course. I don't want them just to be able to "right click" on a file and download. They must get either permission or purchase content that I have available and set up in files. So please how do I set up a page for my guests to download certain files ? Thankyou, su

If you want to only allow certain users to download a file, you will either need to set up permissions on your server and give each user a User ID and password, or you can use some sort of server side scripting language such as ASP.NET to do the authentication for you.

Hi, thanks for your reply,
I wanted to set up my page as a download page, with payment provided by Paypal. The viewer of my website will first to to a "gallery" and look at some products they wish to purchase. Then once they select a product they wish to purchase, they will be set to another page for payment instructions, then sent to another page to actually "download" the content. Can you explain how I can do this step by step since I have never done this before. thanks, susu

Well first of all you need to pick a server side language. If you already have a host, find out which one(s) they support. If not, read up about them on the web, pick one and find a host that supports it. (I highly reccomend ASP.NET).

Setting up a payment through paypal involves the following:
- Gather your data (i.e. what item the user wants to order, how much it costs, etc)
- Forward them to the PayPal payment page, passing a few parameters in the query string. These include your PayPal ID (where the payment is being sent), the amount, invoice number, page to go to when complete, page to go to if the payment is cancelled, etc.)
- As you are doing instant downloads, you will need to look up how to use PayPals Instant Payment Notification (IPN - see PayPals site for more info). This is where PayPal will make a request to your server after the payment has gone through so you know that the user hasn't just copied the Return URL and gone straight to the download page without actually paying.

thanks for your help, really appreciate it, is there a special transaction fee rate from paypal if you do not sell a lot of stuff each month. thanks again

No, they just charge you a small percentage of every transaction regardless of how many you make per month. (Unless you make loads, in which case you might be able to get a business account or something - check out their site for details)