Posted by Bergamot on 10/11/93 12:01

Ken Hall wrote:
> I am trying to devise a way to mask the first page a person goes to on
> my website.

So you've decided on a solution before you've even stated what the
actual problem is. That's usually a bad way to go about things.

> I sell piece of software. The easiest way for me to
> arrange the sale is to use PayPal who then will route the purchaser to
> a target HTML page on my website. But, if the buyer knows which page
> they are going to, they can pass that page around and others can
> pirate the program.

OK, so the real problem is restricting access to the download. You don't
want to give it to the buyer until they've paid, and you don't want it
publicly available.

> The address (entry page) used by PayPal does not change, so I would
> like to relay purchasers from the entry page in a way they can't know
> the address of the entry page.

You should use PayPal IPN and email the buyer a temporary link that's
generated server-side. If the link is set to expire, it won't do much
good to pass it around to their friends.

> I'm not a very sophisticated HTML person. I depend pretty much on
> HTML page creator programs.

Sorry to disappoint, but you can't do this with just HTML. There are
ready-made scripts out there if you look around. One is LinkLok. It's
not free, but it is inexpensive and works as advertised.
http://www.vibralogix.com

--
Berg

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