Video Guide
What You’ll Need
- Amazon S3 Account
- Memberium Plugin
What is Amazon S3
Amazon S3 is a very nifty service and if you aren’t using it, it’s definitely worth checking out. The S3 stands for Simple Storage Service and what Amazon S3 does in a nutshell is store data for you.
People store their data on Amazon S3 when it’s too much to keep stored on a single website without causing performance issues. This cloud storage makes a lot of sense for running a membership site because you’re sure to be dealing with large amounts of data. So all those PDF’s, videos and other documents that you want your users to download can be stored by Amazon instead of by you.
You can store any kind of data on Amazon S3, including videos, text documents, audio files and any other kind of content your site provides. If your members need to download it, then you can definitely put it on Amazon S3.
Memberium integrates easily with Amazon S3 to help you protect your downloadable data from exploitation.
Getting Your S3 Access Keys
The video below will show you how to generate and access your Amazon S3 Access and Secret keys.
Setting File Permissions
Below you’ll see a demonstration of how to make sure your S3 files aren’t public. The key is to remove all permissions for the “Everyone” group. You’ll also want note down the path to the file. In my example, the bucket is ‘lesson523’ and the file name is ‘lesson1.pdf’
Configuring Memberium
In WordPress, navigate to Memberium>>Remote Files and fill in the details we just acquired. The Profile name will be used in Memberium shortcodes to reference back to this S3 account. The Default Host is usually “s3.amazonaws.com” and the Expiration can be set to 30. The other details will be specific to your S3 account.
Setting up Shortcodes:
We have various shortcodes that hook into the S3 integration, but for this guide we’re focusing on downloads so we’ll use the [memb_s3_link] shortcode.
Example linking to the file shown in the second step:
<a [memb_s3_link htmlattr=href profile=”test” object=”lesson1.pdf”] > Download Lesson 1 </a>
You can add other HTML attributes to the text or even use an image that links to the file. Once the user clicks on that link, the expiration countdown will start. If you chose 30, as was recommended above, then after 30 seconds the link will stop working so if it was shared it would expire likely before the recipient would be able to access it.
That’s it!
If you have any questions or would like some help at anytime, our support team is standing by.
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The number one delay in ticket service is incomplete or wrong information.
