Protect PDF files to open in browser but allow download in WordPress

I need to protect all my PDF files.

For that, I add the following lines to .htaccess to prevent directory browsing:

Options All -Indexes

Then, I created another .htaccess file inside wp-content folder and add this lines:

Order deny,allow
Deny from all
<Files ~ ".(xml|css|jpe?g|png|gif|js|svg)$">
   Allow from all
</Files>

Now I can’t access PDF files directly. But I need a way to allow user click in links and download the files.

UPDATE

I tried with this snippet, but it caused error 500 in website:

<FilesMatch ".(?i:doc|odf|pdf|rtf|txt)$">
    Header set Content-Disposition attachment
</FilesMatch>

Error 500 solved by enabling Apache header module.

But now when I click in the link, the page return error 403 because my second snippet. Is there a way to avoid direct link and allow download?

Post Views: 1