Have you spent time creating your own ebook or PDF? Perhaps you have bought a product that you can resell or giveaway to subscribers to help build a list.

Well the last thing you want is for readers to find the ebook and then download it without them giving you their email address so that you can build your list or paying for it if it is not free!

I have been looking for ways to keep a download page secure so that it can’t be easily found. I have come across some plugins that will do this but they are quite expensive – I want something free! 🙂

I found a few helpful videos and posts around the internet with ideas on what to do so I going to share them with you.

Hidding Your Download Page

If your pdf is fairly small (under 2 mega bytes) then you can just use the upload button (like you do when uploading images to your pages or posts) to upload the pdf to your uploads folder. It will then be located in a folder that looks like this:

https://www.mywebsite.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/xxxxx.pdf

You would then create a download page with a link to your PDF file:

<a href=”https://www.mywebsite.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/xxxxx.pdf”>Click Here to Download Ebook</a>

Now some wordpress themes will then automatically add any new pages you create to your navigation. You don’t want that – you want to keep this download page hidden!

Some themes have the option for you to hide pages but if you don’t have that there is a free plugin that you can use.

Exclude Pages – it is regularly updated too. You’ll then get a widget at the bottom of your page in your wordpress dashboard and you can then decide to exclude it from your list of pages and navigation menu.