"pay-per-download" questions

[stahlhammer]

Hello everyone. I have been designing websites for about 1.5 years now and my biggest website is the official site of a band. They have asked me if it is possible to add a feature to the website that allows a user to pay a given amount to download high quality, full length songs. This will be in addition to the partial song samples already available on the site.

I know that it is possible to do this, but unfortunately my web design and coding knowledge does not extend much beyond HTML, CSS, and minimal PHP. I do not know how to go about coding something that would allow a person to download a particular file only after paying the given amount, and how to prevent anyone else from accessing the file.

There are many things I would like to get some help with: First, what coding language would be used to do this? Then, are there any sort of tutorials or websites online that could give me knowledge about how to do this? About how difficult would it be to code something like this? And finally, how dependable is it against people who try to get the file without permission to?

Any and all help in this matter is greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance to anyone who can help me.

[lebhead]

Well, i'm no expert, but it sounds like you'll be using (and improving) your PHP skills. The only way I can think of doing it effectively is having a login system with a shopping cart of sorts. You may also want to consider whether or not you will allow a user to re-download a song that they have already paid for.

PHP/mySQL should be able to handle this project fine.

[robert adams]

search hotscripts under file manipulation for downloads
I got many to choose from.

luck,
robert

[stahlhammer]

Thank you. I will try searching for some stuff, I had started to yesterday. I guess I'll have to learn some more PHP too... Any other recommendations, let me know.