Need HELP with a mod_auth_mysql alternative.

[abelleba]

Hello,

 

My webhost can't enable mod_auth_mysql for various reasons on the shared server I'm on. I don't know PHP all that well and was wondering if there are any alternatives.

 

I'll explain what I'm trying to accomplish exactly first:

 

I need to save bandwidth on my blog. I have links to missing driver files that are very large in size. I wish to protect these links only allowing the registered users access to content. I thought I would be able to do this using auth_mysql by authenticating to the Users table of my Drupal database.

 

I found some .htaccess code that will allow authentication based on the referring page but I don't know what page these users would be coming from that is different from Guest users.

 

I don't wish to make a separate login for this content using normal .htaccess authentication. There is nothing in the Drupal core that will allow these actions either. I can only set it up so Guests cannot view blogs, but I wish to have Guests view my blogs, but not a specific area or the page containing the links to the large files.

 

I was thinking I could setup a additional login script using PHP/MySQL that would simply take the user to a specific page. To do this, I would need to be able to code a script that authenticates using the same information Drupal does in my database under the Users table.

 

Does anyone have any other suggestions? I have been looking into this for about a week now and can't come up with too much as I don't understand PHP that well, but I'm willing to get my hands dirty if I can be guided in the right direction. mod_auth_mysql seemed so easy to use a promising. A shame I can't use it, but hopefully I'll end up gaining more knowledge doing it another way at least.

 

Thanks for your time I greatly appreciate it.

 

Regards,

 

[genericnumber1]

As you said, the only logical alternative I could think of is to create a php/mysql based login system. I'm not sure why you discounted that as an alternative.