How to deny users access to a certain directory?

[keeking]

Hi, I'm looking for a way to deny users access to a certain directory.
eg. I uploaded some stuff to a directory: http://www.example.com/stuff/
now I want people to download stuff through hyperlink such as http://www.example.com/stuff/stuff1.
but I don't want people visit that directory directly. I tried to creat a .htaccess file and write "deny from all¡± in it, it indeed denied people to access, but people couldn't download from that dirctory either...
Any help would be appreciate.

[edited by: engine at 9:46 am (utc) on Jun 5, 2010]
[edit reason] examplified [/edit]

[g1smd]

One solution is to set a cookie for authentication and only allow access if the cookie has been previously set.

As you found out, the DENY directive denies everything.

[tangor]

Not sure how secure you'd want it, but I'd use .htaccess and password. And possibly autogen the password and update htaccess for that subdirectory then send the password to the specific user.

[keeking]

I'm totally doesn't know about how to set cookie, but thank you guys!

[g1smd]

There's tens of thousands of code examples in this and other sites.