Password protected download for community

Question

Our school has a document that they want to share with the parents of the school. We'd like to be able to send a link and password to the school's mailing list.

I know that this isn't the most secure way of doing things, but the key thing is that the document can't be on an unprotected link.

Can anybody recommend a site or utility that would allow us to do this?

Answer 1

Create a free Posterous blog and set it to private with a password.

A Posterous blog is simple to update - in your case, you would send an email with a file attachment(s). Within seconds or minutes you get an email reply from posterous with a permalink to your new post which contains the download file.

In your school newsletter you mention that link and the site password.

Advantages over dropbox (also a great solution):

• If you need to change the group password, there is only one to change and all downloads will be protected under the new one immediately.
• Parents only have to deal with one password (and they'll have the checkbox option of Remember password the first time they go to get a download).
• Inherently, you get a history attachments (it's a blog after all).
• You'll be familiar with a solid blogging platform if and when it's time to migrate technology used for the (mass email) school newsletter.

Answer 2

The simplest way to achieve that is by using .htaccess and .htpassword on a specific directory (e.g.: www.mysite.com/protecteddirectory/). See here a tutorial for setting that up and here a password generator for it.

You just upload the document inside the respective directory and then just send its link and the username&password to the respective mailing list.

ATTENTION: send the link to the document - www.mysite.com/protecteddirectory/document.doc - not the link to the directory.