im not sure how well that would work to get zip files anyways, as i get the impression that get_file_contents is more designed for reading plaintext. now while i havent read an rfc on zip, the file is compressed. im not sure how that would affect trying to read the file as if it was plaintext and then trying to force the server to display it as a zip?

now there is gzip/zip/rar support in PHP, although you may need to install some extensions or possibly PECL. If you really want to keep your files hidden, id suggest trying to dynamically zipping the files on each request. that way the user never really knows where they are comming from. Im not sure what kind of performance impacts that would have. wouldnt suggest it for a high volume website but for something that only gets downloaded a few times a day, shouldnt be difficult.