How to remove/hide/block 'sdm_downloads' directory?

Hi can you elaborate a bit more in regards to your comment.

and I believe this is because they are accessing the /sdm_downloads directory which happens to be very high on Google rankings for my website.

Hi,

Sorry I didn’t see your post until now. The directory:

https://www.mydomain.com/sdm_downloads

Is accessible to ALL users (whether they are logged in or not) – but I don’t want it accessible by anyone. Unfortunately this directory shows up under Google. This allows users to go to this page, that is created by the plugin, and download what they want.

The main users directory I have is mydomain.com/downloads and this is restricted to logged in users only. This is where I want people to download from and not the sdm_downloads directory. Does that make more sense?

Hi, I just carried out a test. I created a new download, I also password protected the download and in my test the following URL path was protected.

https://www.mydomain.com/sdm_downloads including the following URL

https://www.mydomain.com/sdm_downloads/download-pdf/

Hi,

Thanks for your help. I don’t want to specifically password protect files. I have them all listed under:

https://www.mydomain.com/downloads

This directory can only be accessed by logged in users. Those that are not logged in are redirected to the registration page/log in page.

However, as I am using Simple Download Monitor, a directory called:

https://www.mydomain.com/sdm_downloads

Is created and is fully accessible even if the user is not logged into our website. There is no direct link on our website to this directory, however, I can only assume people are accessing it through Google because 1) I can find the directory on Google and 2) there are quite a few downloads from “Not Logged In” users.

Thanks!

As I mentioned above it does not happen to me when I test this option.

If the following folder

https://www.mydomain.com/sdm_downloads

Is accessible then there is another issue in your website. You need to investigate this. Do you have any security plugin installed?

Hi,

Yes, the company had installed “All In One WP Security”.

The sdm_downloads page shows all of our downloads available and how often they’ve been donwloaded.

Thanks.

If you have All In One WP Security plugin installed can you check to make sure your files system security list is good and all are protected. Can you also check the log files found under WP Security -> Dashboard -> AIOWPS Logs.

Has this issue been fixed? I am with super-admin-2014…I do not want to have to individually password protect every download. I just want to prevent people from accessing/indexing/seeing the ‘sdm_downloads’ folder created by the plugin. How did you fix this?

@johnnyp14 what version are you currently running in your site? The following was added in version 3.3.1.

Added a new feature to hide the download counts that is shown in some of the fancy templates. This new option can be found in the settings menu of the plugin.

Is the above what you are referring to?

v3.3.2
I’m not worried about a download count. I’m concerned about the
https://www.mysite.com/sdm_downloads
page being accessible (or even existing). That page gives anyone access to all the downloads. I am password protecting individual client pages and then placing their corresponding download/shortcode to their page. I don’t want bots/crawlers/anyone to know about a download unless I specifically send that person their custom login page which contains the sdm download.

It works with the exception of the sdm_downloads page…just wanna get rid of that.

Hi, you can read the following support thread. Unfortunately the feature you are after has not been added yet. However you can protect each download and that in return will stop anyone from viewing the download if they type the following URL [https://www.mysite.com/sdm_downloads].