I'm trying to allow url-redirection (from /dl urls) only if user is logged-in to wordpress site. Otherwise don't allow. However it went "page not found" when i click these urls with or without logging in.

I've used this .htaccess code on public-html level:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_COOKIE} ^.*wordpress_logged_in.*$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^dl/?$  [L,R=301]

I expect to allow logged-in users to redirect to links and don't allow redirection (and redirect them to login page) if they are not logged-in to wordpress. However when i click the links which are like .html both logged-in and not logged-in goes to "page not found". How to fix?

also tried below code and get the same file code when i click :'''www.example/download.php/2n234n23/file.html''' : '''//load WP without theme support or hooks etc. define('WP_USE_THEMES', false);'''

//load WP without theme support or hooks etc.
define('WP_USE_THEMES', false);
require('./wp-load.php'); //location of this file may be different 

if(get_current_user_id()){
    //user has valid WP login session
    header('Location: {location of perl script}');
}else{
    //user is not logged in
    header('Location: {location to boot them to}');
}
exit; //just because

How can i change above code to make it useful?

I'm trying to allow url-redirection (from /dl urls) only if user is logged-in to wordpress site. Otherwise don't allow. However it went "page not found" when i click these urls with or without logging in.

I've used this .htaccess code on public-html level:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_COOKIE} ^.*wordpress_logged_in.*$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^dl/?$ https://external/directdownload- [L,R=301]

I expect to allow logged-in users to redirect to https://external/directdownload- links and don't allow redirection (and redirect them to login page) if they are not logged-in to wordpress. However when i click the links which are like https://www.example/dl/23434234/link.html both logged-in and not logged-in goes to "page not found". How to fix?

also tried below code and get the same file code when i click :'''www.example/download.php/2n234n23/file.html''' : '''//load WP without theme support or hooks etc. define('WP_USE_THEMES', false);'''

//load WP without theme support or hooks etc.
define('WP_USE_THEMES', false);
require('./wp-load.php'); //location of this file may be different 

if(get_current_user_id()){
    //user has valid WP login session
    header('Location: {location of perl script}');
}else{
    //user is not logged in
    header('Location: {location to boot them to}');
}
exit; //just because

How can i change above code to make it useful?

• php
• javascript
• redirect
• htaccess
• membership

1 Answer 1

An htaccess rule is evaluated before WP is called to get page content. So there is no variable you could use in an htaccess rule to check if a user is logged in.

Instead, I'd add to your functions.php file code that would check the is_user_logged_in() result. If not logged in, then use wp_redirect() to redirect to a login page. The die() is important after the wp_redirect so that the redirect will work properly.

Code would look something like this (not tested):

function check_user_logged_in() {
if (! is_user_logged_in()) {
   // not logged in, so redirect them
   wp_redirect("https://www.example/login-page");
   die();
   }
return;}
add_filter("init", "check_user_logged_in"); // fires the function on WP init

Of course, this should be placed in your Child Theme's functions.php file.

Added 20 Jul 2020

Corrected the code fragment to be is_user_logged_in - which I did speify correctly in the non-code portion of the answer. Thanks to @Frits for his eagle eye. (I did say it was untested code, so maybe that's my excuse....)