my_name_is_chris

Thanks for your suggestions and for the warning. I will look into sessions and custom/invoice variables.

Thanks for explaining the process, I understand a bit better now. With your described method, would I have to create a database that stores the IPN information, and if so, how would I associate that IPN info with a particular visitor?

Hi there. I'm a beginner so hopefully someone can help me. Say I have a paypal button on my site, that after using it to pay, takes you to a page with a download link on it that allows you to download a file on my sites server. How can I make it so that people can't just bypass the payment process by typing in the url of the download link page? I've looked into PayPal IPN but I find it hard to understand the underlying code, and wonder if there's another way. Any actual coding examples would be gratefully appreciated.