corz distro machine
f.a.q..

can I make my download links shorter?

Yes!

you can add a couple of lines to your .htaccess file (the one in the root of your web server) to redirect some short URL to a long one. something like..

RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^funk(.*) /deep/path/to/files/folder/download.php$1

will send this URL..

http://mysite/funk?download=file.zip

to here..

http://mysite/deep/path/to/files/folder/download.php?download=file.zip

pretty cool. I've started doing my own downloads like this. it works with source view requests too..

http://mysite/funk?source=valid.php

The distro machine also allows you to set this internally, so that all the links it creates, in menus, embedded menus, downloads and what-have-you, also use your short link. Cool.

Beware: whatever word you chose for this (in our example, 'funk') must be a unique word that is not used in another URL in the root of your site. If you had, say, a file called funk.html, attempting to access it would throw up a 404 error. /funky/index.html would do the same. But so long as it doesn't begin with the same word, and it's not in the root of your site, there will be no problem. /my/funk.html is fine.

In reality, all the downloading is handled transparently, so the actual URL should never appear in the user's address bar. the only place it is seen is in any status bar the user's browser may have. I know, the wee things can be so important.

it is cool, though, to be able to send folks to http://mysite/funk

Here's some more suggested rules to make things interesting..

	RewriteEngine On
	RewriteRule ^funk/(.*)		/funk$1 [nc]
	RewriteRule ^funk(.*)		/deep/path/to/files/folder/download.php$1 [nc]
	RewriteRule ^source/(.*)	/deep/path/to/files/folder/source/$1 [nc]
	

the [nc] bit just means No Case, or case insensitive match, so /FUNK would be caught just the same.

can I run everything in one folder?

Yes, though it's not so easy as it used to be

In your preferences, set your download path to './' which means "this folder", now you can just chuck your downloads right in with the machine. you can do the same with you source folder preference too, have the whole lot just swimming around. very messy, though.

NOTE: you will need to move the "inc" folder out of the way, and enure the preferences that lead to there are altered to match your new location. You can leave it in there, but folk would wander about. They couldn't see your passwords or anything like that, but it will look untidy.

next!