I’ve had someone ask how they can add a private area to their site where users can upload, share and manage files. I assume this is for a business so the files would be shared internally only.
I don’t have any experience with this so wonder if anyone knows of any plugins that will let you do this?
“Private area” is still very ambiguous, so you might want to elaborate more for more pointed advice.
That said, I would never use WordPress to hold a file I didn’t want the public to have. It just isn’t made for that, and I haven’t seen anything that builds it in.
The exception is selling commerce items, but even then the best way is to store the files as blob objects, and use an API to access it with a one-time transaction token. An example would be someone buying a music track from you, and they get the link from an S3 bucket. WooCommerce and EDD plugins can do that.
But the things you describe sound like a shared document folder. I personally use Nextcloud, which is great for that; I’ve deployed it for plenty of clients, as well. In addition to covering many of the use cases of Google Docs, but it has a few advantages:
Those are my recs. 
Perhaps go back to the person who asked you in the first place?
Working on an assumption is almost always a waste of time…
Thanks for the suggestion
This request came through a premium theme support request. I told the customer I had no experience with this but I thought I would ask here in case anyone else did since there could be something I was missing. This isn’t a client so I don’t see a need to go any deeper than what I have.
Thanks for the feedback. There’s some interesting points there I hadn’t considered. I will point the customer here so she can make an informed decision.
I think the term for this is called “document management” which may be familiar to users of Microsoft products like SharePoint, but there’s some confusion on what that means exactly in the WordPress world.
For example, this blog post lists a bunch of download managers, which don’t offer the ability for users to upload/share/manage their own files.
This is the only promising thing I could find but can’t personally vouch for it because I’ve never used it: https://wordpress.org/plugins/dms/
Also this: https://wordpress.org/plugins/buddydrive/ …but it sounds like it requires BuddyPress which may be overkill. Again, can’t vouch for it because I haven’t used it.
Thanks Leland - that’s helpful and looks like it will do what I was imagining.
I’d been looking at file managers but they were all like ftp apps inside WP which is totally wrong.
Hi @BinaryMoon,
The problem is that sharing files internally and all employees will access to files. Isn’t it? In my opinion, the company should use Google Suite I am serious. Using any other solutions will be expensive and less secure for them.
Of course, they can use any membership area plugin but they will need a storage solution to store their files. It means when they use a WordPress solution, this solution will connect a third party solution such as Dropbox, Amazon web service etc.
And as a supporter of WordPress ecosystem, There are many plugins to connect your Google G-Suite to your WordPress Membership area.
As informed as that may be, it is an opinion, and debatable. I can think of a few services that are less expensive and more secure, so research would be in order for the person seeking the file sharing.
Had a similar issue. These replies have been really helpful! Thanks guys!
I have used this user private files plugin https://wordpress.org/plugins/user-private-files/ worked very well for me