Ok, I've had a tad of a play under the hood of the download manager plugin and it now has two hooks.

If you want to log a download then use h[x]ttp://download/<file path/name>

If you just want to protect a file (such as images etc) from hotlinking then use h[x]ttp://protected/<file path/name>

All files just get uploaded to media/blogs/chat/protected/<path to file>

I changed the media dir to put it back in the webroot as the filemanager throws a fit if I put it above webroot (must remember to bring that one up on the dev list).

Coming soon :-
Two more "hooks" [am_dl_percent <file path/name>] and [am_dl_count <file path/name>] these will return numbers and can be used as straight text or part of an img url:-

This file has been downloaded [am_dl_count <file path/name>] times

<img src='h[x]ttp://skin/img/[am_dl_percent <file path/name>]percent.jpg' />

Ohh yeah, and I need to render h[x]ttp://skin/ as '' to allow for urls relative to SkinBase().

¥