Custom Joomla Extensions

PayDrop turns any Joomla article into a shop for a single digital file. The buyer pays with PayPal, lands on a thank-you page that nobody can reach without a valid token, and downloads the file through a one-time link that expires. Your files never sit at a public URL.

• Sell ZIP, PDF, PSD, EPUB, audio, video — anything you can put in a folder.
• Payments are verified directly with PayPal before a single byte is served, so a shared thank-you link is worthless without a real transaction.
• Every purchase gets a one-time download link with its own lifetime and download limit. One PayPal transaction can be redeemed once.
• Buyers can pay by card without a PayPal account when guest checkout is enabled on your PayPal account.
• The download link is also e-mailed to the buyer, so a closed browser window does not cost you a support ticket.
• Upload files straight from the product form — they land in the protected folder and attach to the product.
• An editor button lists your products and inserts the shortcode for you.
• Sales overview with buyer, amount, PayPal transaction id and download count.

PayDrop was built security-first. The folder holding your files is closed to the web automatically: the component writes .htaccess, web.config and an empty index.html into it and reports the protection status in the admin. Files are streamed through Joomla, paths are resolved with realpath() and confined to that folder, and tokens are compared in constant time. Tokenised pages are excluded from the page cache, and a token is never written into cached HTML — so one buyer can never be served another buyer's link. Uploads accept only a fixed list of non-executable file types, and names such as file.php.zip are refused outright.

The only outgoing connection PayDrop makes is the payment verification request to PayPal, sent when a buyer returns from checkout. No telemetry, no licence phone-home, nothing else leaves your server.

How it works

1. You create a product: a file, a price and the article buyers return to after paying.
2. You drop its shortcode into your sales article — or click the PayDrop button under the editor.
3. The buyer pays with PayPal or a card.
4. PayDrop verifies the transaction with PayPal and issues a one-time download link.
5. The buyer downloads the file, and receives the same link by e-mail.

Requirements

• Joomla 4, 5 or 6
• PHP 7.4 or newer
• A PayPal business account with Auto Return and Payment Data Transfer enabled
• Apache, LiteSpeed or nginx (on nginx you add one deny rule by hand — the manual shows it)

Installation

1. Log in to the Joomla administrator as a Super User.
2. Go to System → Install → Extensions.
3. On the Upload Package File tab, drop in pkg_paydrop.zip.
4. Wait for the success message. The component, its three plugins and a protected files folder are set up for you.
5. Open Components → PayDrop → Options and enter your PayPal e-mail and PDT identity token. The screen explains where to find the token, step by step.
6. Create your first product and paste its shortcode into an article.

License

PayDrop is commercial software distributed under an open-source license. This page covers both the license that governs the code (the GNU GPL) and the commercial terms that govern your purchase (updates and support). They cover different things — please read both.

1. Software License — GNU GPL v2 or later

Because PayDrop runs inside and links against the Joomla!® CMS, which is itself licensed under the GNU General Public License, the PayDrop source code is likewise licensed under the GNU General Public License, version 2 or (at your option) any later version.

Under the GPL you are free to:

• use the software on any number of websites, personal or commercial;
• study and modify the full, un-obfuscated PHP source code;
• redistribute the software, provided you keep it under the same GPL terms and retain the copyright and license notices.

PayDrop for Joomla — Copyright © 2026 Saint Art Designs.
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

The complete text of the GPL v2 ships with the product in LICENSE.txt and is available at gnu.org.

2. Commercial Terms — what your purchase includes

The GPL covers the code. It does not cover services. When you buy PayDrop from Saint Art Designs you are paying for the service package around the software: access to downloads, in-place updates through your Joomla administrator, and support.

Your purchase includes a licence key. Paste it into the Download Key field of the PayDrop update site on your own Joomla, and new versions arrive the same way they do for free extensions. The key is valid for twelve months. When it lapses your installed copy keeps working — only access to new versions stops, and you can renew at any time.

3. Support

Access to Saint Art Designs support for installation, configuration and troubleshooting during your subscription.

4. Trademarks

Joomla!® is a registered trademark of Open Source Matters, Inc. PayPal is a trademark of PayPal, Inc. Saint Art Designs and PayDrop are not affiliated with or endorsed by either.

Documentation

You can find the documentation here

Support

Reach us through our contact form

Payment & Download