Restrict Access to wp-content/uploads when User is not Logged In

Contents and files are the main assets of your website/business. In some case you may want to show your content only for website members who are logged in. Assume you are an artist, and you make and sell songs for living. When a user registers and buys your album, you do not want your album download links to be exposed to the public where they can all consume and share. So lets fix that.

access-denied

Open up your .htaccess found on the root folder of your website then place the block of code bellow:

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RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -s
RewriteRule ^wp-content/uploads/(.*)$ dl-file.php?file=$1 [QSA,L]

What the code above does is it detects if a file is being accessed directly under wp-content/uploads/ folder, we then redirect the user to dl-file.php to validate if the user has any privilege to view the file.

Now, create the file dl-file.php in your root directory then place the block of code bellow:

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 /*
 * dl-file.php
 *
 * Protect uploaded files with login.
 *
 * @link http://wordpress.stackexchange.com/questions/37144/protect-wordpress-uploads-if-user-is-not-logged-in
 *
 * @author hakre <http://hakre.wordpress.com/>
 * @license GPL-3.0+
 * @registry SPDX
 */

 
require_once('wp-load.php');

is_user_logged_in() ||  auth_redirect();

list($basedir) = array_values(array_intersect_key(wp_upload_dir(), array('basedir' => 1)))+array(NULL);

$file =  rtrim($basedir,'/').'/'.str_replace('..', '', isset($_GET[ 'file' ])?$_GET[ 'file' ]:'');
if (!$basedir || !is_file($file)) {
    status_header(404);
    die('404 &#8212; File not found.');
}

$mime = wp_check_filetype($file);
if( false === $mime[ 'type' ] && function_exists( 'mime_content_type' ) )
    $mime[ 'type' ] = mime_content_type( $file );

if( $mime[ 'type' ] )
    $mimetype = $mime[ 'type' ];
else
    $mimetype = 'image/' . substr( $file, strrpos( $file, '.' ) + 1 );

header( 'Content-Type: ' . $mimetype ); // always send this
if ( false === strpos( $_SERVER['SERVER_SOFTWARE'], 'Microsoft-IIS' ) )
    header( 'Content-Length: ' . filesize( $file ) );

$last_modified = gmdate( 'D, d M Y H:i:s', filemtime( $file ) );
$etag = '"' . md5( $last_modified ) . '"';
header( "Last-Modified: $last_modified GMT" );
header( 'ETag: ' . $etag );
header( 'Expires: ' . gmdate( 'D, d M Y H:i:s', time() + 100000000 ) . ' GMT' );

// Support for Conditional GET
$client_etag = isset( $_SERVER['HTTP_IF_NONE_MATCH'] ) ? stripslashes( $_SERVER['HTTP_IF_NONE_MATCH'] ) : false;

if( ! isset( $_SERVER['HTTP_IF_MODIFIED_SINCE'] ) )
    $_SERVER['HTTP_IF_MODIFIED_SINCE'] = false;

$client_last_modified = trim( $_SERVER['HTTP_IF_MODIFIED_SINCE'] );
// If string is empty, return 0. If not, attempt to parse into a timestamp
$client_modified_timestamp = $client_last_modified ? strtotime( $client_last_modified ) : 0;

// Make a timestamp for our most recent modification...
$modified_timestamp = strtotime($last_modified);

if ( ( $client_last_modified && $client_etag )
    ? ( ( $client_modified_timestamp >= $modified_timestamp) && ( $client_etag == $etag ) )
    : ( ( $client_modified_timestamp >= $modified_timestamp) || ( $client_etag == $etag ) )
    ) {
    status_header( 304 );
    exit;
}

// If we made it this far, just serve the file
readfile( $file );

To prevent direct access to directory listings, simply add the additional code bellow:

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Options All -Indexes

Redirect to login page instead of showing Error Message 403 (Forbidden)

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ErrorDocument 403 /login.php


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