Sign up & download form in 10 minutes

I recently wrote about the excellent Entity Registration module that enables you to set up registration forms for your event in doubel-quick time.

Recently, we had a requirement to create another sign up form, this time for protected file downloads - a form was required to gather contact details, email addresses and so on before enabling users to view protected content. We could have used Entity Form for this but we opted for Webform as this is already being used on the site.

So we need to create a protected sign up form that enables users to download files only once they have entered their details and these are safely stored for the client.

A very common requirement that is easily fulfilled by Drupal. Here's how to do it in 10 minutes: Install Webform (if you don't already have it) Install Webform Protected Downloads Set up the fields you want your users to fill in before receiving their downloads - eg name, email etc Add a file field to your webform content type and make sure you click 'Private' for file storage Upload your file to your webform Click the Protected Downloads tab on your webform and click the checkbox to make the file protected. (This is a nice feature of the module as you can have some files available on the form that don't need verification and others that do). Check the settings on the Protected Downloads page.

The defaults are pretty well good enough, although you'll probably want to tweak your overall form submission message to tell people that they have been sent an email with a link to the download file. If you don't want your users to receive an email link and instead just want them to download the link as soon as they have entered their email address, you can set this within the form settings too. That's it. It really doesn't take more much than about 10 minutes to have a simple form like this set up.

Secure, spam-free download forms and you have a list of all your users sign up details.