FTP question

[legalsnugs]

I am trying mightily to sell an e-book I put together online. I signed up with 1&1.com for a small business website and with Clickbank.com to handle the money side of things. So far, so good.

Clickbank.com wants its vendors to have a “Pitch page” (i.e. a homepage where your product is pitched), and a “Thank You page” where, after the payment is approved, Clickbank.com will direct the purchaser to go to actually download the product.

1&1.com provided a WebsiteBuilder program (I wanted to use my own html code there, but they make you buy an additional program if you want to put your own code into their websitebuilder).

Okay, I created my homepage. But I do not want my “Thank you page” to be linked from the Homepage (otherwise, purchasers will click on that link, rather than the “order now” link, and download the ebook w/o paying). I only want people at the “Thank you page” through Clickbank.com.

I uploaded my homepage via the 1&1.com-provided WISE-FTP (I clicked “Publish” in the WebsiteBuilder program). Great, it’s up and online.

Now I need to upload the “Thank you page.” I went to WISE-FTP and created a folder under the right-side column (headed “Remote System: Myname (mydomain.com)”). I called this folder “/thankyoupage”. I dragged my .html document from the left-side column (a file on my computer) to the new folder. When I click on the folder, it’s there.

Should I not now be able to access this page at “www.mydomain.com/thankyoupage.html”?

If not, why not? What have I done wrong? What step did I miss?

I’ve been emailing the 1&1.com “help” desk without getting any real answers. They tell me to send my thankyoupage to Clickbank.com. I don’t understand that; Clickbank.com doesn’t host; they just redirect, presumably to my website’s thankyou page. I am so confused. How do I get my thank you page online?

Thanks in advance for your help!!

[chrisk]

@legalsnugs

Now I need to upload the “Thank you page.” I went to WISE-FTP and created a folder under the right-side column (headed “Remote System: Myname (mydomain.com)”). I called this folder “/thankyoupage”. I dragged my .html document from the left-side column (a file on my computer) to the new folder. When I click on the folder, it’s there.

Should I not now be able to access this page at “www.mydomain.com/thankyoupage.html”?

If not, why not? What have I done wrong? What step did I miss?

First, setting aside all the stuff about the ebook and citibank and the thank-you page, because this seems to be the core of your question:

No, if you have a document called ‘.html’ inside a folder ‘thankyoupage’ on your website ‘www.mydomain.com’, it should not be accessible at “www.mydomain.com/thankyoupage.html” No webserver understands folder tricks like this.

The proper URL for your file is “www.mydomain.com/thankyoupage/.html” This makes it clear to the web server, and everyone else, that you are not accessing a page called thankyoupage.html, but a document called .html inside a folder called thankyoupage
Taking a stab at the problem that actually inspired this monstrosity, why not call the page thankyoupage.html, and NOT LINK IT from your pitch page or anywhere else on your website? Does their crappy websitebuilder support this, or can you do it with the FTP? (Why are you using their crappy WebsiteBuilder if you have FTP access?)

In fact, if citibank lets you pick your own thank-you page URL, you can make it much more complicated, so that people will be unlikely to stumble upon it even if they start punching in different possibilities in the browser address bar.

Note: This system still does not seem very secure. Once the first person buys and sees the link, he could tell a bunch of his friends or even post the thank-you page URL on a board or other website, and everybody who sees that can get your product without paying. I know that there are ways to tighten up the delivery of a digital product to make sure that your server is only sending it to people who have genuinely paid you, but I don’t know the details about them, and your plan with citibank may not support them.

Good luck!

[Nametag]

I know nothing about this “1&1”, or clickbank, but it does rather sound as if your page should be at “www.mydomain.com/thankyoupage/thankyoupage.html”

Doesn’t your FTP client show your directory structure?

[legalsnugs]

@Nametag

I know nothing about this “1&1”, or clickbank, but it does rather sound as if your page should be at “www.mydomain.com/thankyoupage/thankyoupage.html”

Doesn’t your FTP client show your directory structure?

That’s IT! Thank you! I was just writing it wrong! It’s all working now! Whoohoo! (Unfortunately, I know just enough about this stuff to be truly dangerous.)

Yes, the FTP client does show the directory, but not how things line up in the URL.

It’s all good now. I’m up and running! Thanks again!

[MrSquishy]

@chrisk

Note: This system still does not seem very secure. Once the first person buys and sees the link, he could tell a bunch of his friends or even post the thank-you page URL on a board or other website, and everybody who sees that can get your product without paying.

Yup. Based on this thread, I just found a bunch of free stuff (that isn’t supposed to be free) with a quick Google search. I’m not sure how these download pages got indexed, but I assume it’s the result of links on other websites (since the seller wouldn’t have any links to the download page for their not-free product on their main site).

legalsnugs, if you’re at all concerned about making sure you’re not giving your book away for free, you might want to Google something like “secure ebook delivery system” and find a better way than what you’re doing.