SS-Downloads WordPress Plugin
July 21, 2010 at 5:25 pm by jason
Testing our new SS-Downloads plugin. It basically will require an email address before serving a specified file. Right now, I’m using a zip of the pre-release plugin for testing. I will update this to point to the latest version once it’s ready.
Should see a form or download link here.
Enter your email address to download ss-downloads.zip
Future plans:
- Option to require account creation (instead of just an email address). Done
- Option to email file as attachment instead of showing a link. Done
- Icons for files in template.
FAQ
Q: My downloads are incomplete, corrupt, or otherwise not downloading… especially large files.
A: This may be caused by a low memory issue or some other issue with serving the file through the getfile.php script. You can configure the plugin to simply redirect to the chosen file rather than serving it through the script by editing /ss-downloads/includes/setup.php and setting the GETFILE_REDIRECT value to true. The file will have to be served in a public web folder, and 733t hackers will be able to see the actual URL of the file.
Note: I’ve changed the GETFILE_REDIRECT to default to true. But if you have the inverse problem (the download is working, but you want to make it more secure by avoiding the redirect — which savvy users might be able to watch to get the URL of the file) you can set that value to false.
Edit:
Bob at 2bretired.com has a good writeup of how to clear out the download stats for your files if you want to do that sort of thing.
This is a nice concept.
If you apply the option for “requiring email signup” – This would be awesome to promote E-books or other similar downloads!
I hope you add that feature soon! Keep up the good work.
Friend, really good but I think if you send a mensage with the link is more good, this detect wrong or fake emails …
or send email with password to open the file.
If you do this please send me to my email, thanks
Nice and clean, one feature I would love is to limit the download email to domain names.
So you could put a doc on a site and the user puts their email in, put if its not from a valid work email they will not recive the download link in an email just an sorry limted to yadda yadda only.
[...] your site is equipped with the SS-Downloads plugin, click here for a tutorial on how to use that functionality. The SS-Downloads plugin allows you to hide a downloadable file behind a required email capture on [...]
Viki, I updated my wording above.
The plugin as coded now does require an email before showing you the download… It was designed specifically for ebooks.
The future feature I was trying to explain is actually to require users create an account on the blog (vs just an email). So the blog admin would be able to choose which (email OR account) they required before serving the file.
So have fun with the plugin.
@roger, that’s a great idea. I’ll add it to the feature list and hopefully get it out as soon as I can.
Going to be away for a couple weeks, but maybe when I get back.
Thanks!
Hi, I’m looking for a way to use WordPress posts to securely distribute .pdf attachments to website members. Currently, members get an email alert, but then they must log into the website to access the pdf. I just want them to be able to download the pdf immediately from the same email that alerts them to a new post. I do not want to share this file url or attachment with non members. I think this is similar to what Roger was asking for above. Thanks for considering this!
hi friend, thanks for your plugin
1. I download and it and active this plugin,and i set code in the my post but, not working!!! can u help me plz!?
2. you can type any email in this form and submit and Run your plugin! thats Problem
However, great
Hmm if you could add a confirmation e-mail so that ppl cant type in anything that would be nice!
Dont working my site .
I activated plugin and use [download file="path_to_file"] etc.
but doest see anything on my site :S
Could be a dumb response on my part, but did you change “path to file” to the actually URL/path to the file?
Can you post a link?
Can folks who the shortcode isn’t working for email me at jason@strangerstudios.com the as much of the following as you can get:
1. Your version of WordPress.
2. A screenshot of your installed plugins.
3. A saved .html of your phpinfo (create a php file with < ?php phpinfo(); ?> in it and brows to that
4. The URL where your blog is posted.
I’m trying to figure out what is causing the plugin to fail for some folks. I am guessing it might have something to do with the use of file_get_contents(), and will look into alternatives.
Thanks!
I have installed pluggin and sent to download a file and used the short code:
[download file="DoYouHaveRom.pdf" title="Do You Have Room?"]
I get no form at all in the post. I am new to the environment and may be missing something. Ideas?
Thanks,
John
@John Edwards Not sure what is going on. If you pasted the filename in, check the HTML tag to make sure no other HTML got pasted into the shortcode. e.g. sometimes [download file="..."] gets pasted in and that messes things up. Try changing the template settings from the plugin options to cURL or the other one. I’m working on something that may fix this in a future issue. Let me know if you are still having problems.
By the sound of it looks like a great concept and plugin. The email confirmation feature would be most usefull.
I can see a great future fo this one all bugs are ironed out. Good job Jason.
Great plugin. Just one problem for me.
I want to offer the link after three paragraphs of text, so it’s below the fold. When you submit the email address the page refreshes and leaves the user back at the top and the download button is out of sight. Happens on three different browsers.
Thanks
Good point. I’ll experiment with adding a #form-id with a corresponding anchor above the form so the submitted page scrolls back down to the form.
You can try this yourself in the plugin code if you can’t wait for my update. Should be a big update this week or next.
Just activated the plugin and worked great after test. How am i notified of the captured email address? thanks
From the instructions:
Navigate to Tools –> SS Downloads to view a list of collected emails and stats on file downloads.
THanks
Great Plugin. One issue you can help me with. If I delete there email from the “collected emails” and save. The plugin puts it back!> I am testing and will be using this for a few different files and each time I would like them to have to put in there email. I DONT want it to remember. I figured removing them from the email list would have them start over in the process. Please help! thank you.
How do you delete the file download list?
How do you delete the collected emails to start fresh?
Thank you
@Frank. The text field of email addresses is just a report so you can copy into your email client, etc. Deleting the email addresses won’t delete them from the DB (for now).
In the meantime, you can run these two SQL queries on your DB to delete all collected email addresses and download stats. I’ll try to put buttons into the plugin settings to do this in a future version.
(change your prefix from wp_ to something else if you changed it)
DELETE FROM wp_justemails;
DELETE FROM wp_ss_downloads;
If you go here
http://www.thewordsworthhotel.co.uk/test/
We’re getting a PHP error message when we try and use the plugin?
@Guy
Different plugin, but this page has some info on fixing that issue:
http://www.tubepress.net/url-file-access-is-disabled-in-the-server-configuration.html
Thanks for pointing this out.
And let me know if you get this working. There is a way to use a different method to access the file that will work around this at the cost of not obfuscating the file location. (Should be built in as an option in a future release.)
There is a bug with your plugin. When you activate the “user must be registered” rule, it doesn’t work.
“This file is protected. You need to enter an email address to gain access. Please contact us if this is unexpected. Back to homepage.”
Julien, if you are still having this problem let me know. I’ll need more info on what’s happening.
Fantastic plugin, just what I need – i’m using it to hide PDF downloads but I need to add a tick box that means people can opt out of having thier email added to the list in Admin so they don’t get added to the marketing emailing list. Is this possible? How would I go about doing it?
Thanks in advance!
You would have to update templates/emailform.php to include the checkbox, and then services/addemail.php to check for that value. If you find it skip the code around line 17 of addemail.php. Hope this helps.
Why does this program allow you to download zip files on here but when I use the plugin on my site people are telling me they get errors trying to download zip files? It works fine for mp3 but for zips it just downloads a getfile.php file?
Am I doing something wrong with the code or is this aknown problem with a fix?
Outisde of those issues its a great plugin!
Has to do with different server setups. Try the GETFILE_REDIRECT fix.
does this work with ” . zip ” files?
i can’t seem to make it work with .zip files.
it also won’t work with a long link from downloads.com
help me, please?
thanks !
Try the GETFILE_REDIRECT fix. Let me know.
This plug-in is a great idea. However, I am having trouble making it work. Perhaps I’m missing a step in the process as I only see the code instead of the form. I am trying to put it in a custom template for a landing page so I’m trying to put the code within the html section of the php file. Any suggestions???
Try installing through the WP admin plugins page.
Hi, Just wanted to say thanks a lot for this plugin. Just what I was looking for. Simple without a thousand of possibilities where we dont know what to do with them
Easy and it works.
Congratulations!
I resend the solution, hopping the blog can accept it …
<div id=”ss-downloads”>
<?php if(<require == “email”) { ?>
<p>You will receive the file in a few moment to: <strong><?=<email?></strong>.<br>Thank you for your interest.</p>
<center><a href=”<?=SSD_RESET_URL?>?postid=<?=<postid?>”>Click to display the form</a></center>
<?php } else { ?>
<?php } ?>
</div>
To complete the antispam strategy you can modify the form too in emailform.php as this:
add an autocomplete=”off” parameter to the input-text field. This is a few known but regular W3C specification that you can use (the website of your banker surely use it!). So placeholder=”Enter your email address …” becomes useless, you can delete it. This gives:
<input class=”input-text” size=”50″ type=”text” name=”email” value=”" autocomplete=”off” />
Just put this above the form:
<p>Enter your email address …</p>
Now bad guys has to click a link, go down to the form and retype their email address to send another mail, discouraging! …
Now another issue I would like to fix is that the email sent contain my real return address. But I would like to hide it and replace it with something like no-reply@mywebsite.com. The change to make is in addemail.php. I’m searching …
And the solution is …
So in addemail.php:
replace this:
$from = get_bloginfo(‘name’) . “<” . get_bloginfo(‘admin_email’) . “>”;
by this:
$from = get_bloginfo(‘name’) . “<no-reply@mywebsite.com>”;
and this:
$mail->From = get_bloginfo(‘admin_email’);
by this:
$mail->From = “no-reply@mywebsite.com”;
And now my last big problem is that the “Send link to file by email” method doesn’t work properly for big files. I mean that if I use this method for, say, a 500 ko file this works fine! But if the file is, say, 3.000 ko the downloaded file is only 1 ko!!! (it is a zip archive file). Actually, when I open this wrong file I can read this message from the server:
<b>Warning</b>: file_get_contents(http://www.mywebsite.com/wp-content/uploads/downloads/myfile.zip) [<a href='function.file-get-contents'>function.file-get-contents</a>]: failed to open stream: HTTP request failed! HTTP/1.1 404 Not Found
in <b>/home.xxx/mywebsite/www/wp-content/plugins/ss-downloads/services/getfile.php</b> on line <b>60</b><br />
I precize that the file EXISTS despite the server says “404 not found” and the method works fine for a smaller file.
in getfile.php on line 60 there is this:
header(“Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=\”" . basename($file) . “\”");
is it the chore of the issue?
I need an expert in PHP, what I am not!
Try the GETFILE_REDIRECT fix above. Test the latest version. Not sure what is going on here.
Hi Jason,
I hope you found advantage with the PHP modifications I sent to you and that you could improve your great plugin with somethings like an option for a “thank you message” instead of a “you can repeat download”. An option for choosing the return email address (blog address or “no-reply” address). I suggest another improvement: a button to delete the file download and email list.
I am always facing the problem with “send link to file by email” option: this doesn’t work propely for big files (say 3 Mo). I send a message to my provider to see if he has an idea… And you Jason, do you have an idea?
Best, Dorjee
Hi, everyone. Thanks for the feedback, bug reports, and code! I’m away for vacation for a week but hope to have an update out before Thanksgiving. Sorry to folks with show stoppers that need to wait.
Is it possible to have a counter for every download?
Stats are recorded and shown in the admin (although others have noted some bugs with them). Do you mean a counter to show on the frontend? You could create one by running a MySQL query to count the number of downloads. I’ll keep it in mind for a future update.
Well I finally found the trick: don’t put any space in the file name!
No matter the size of the file. If the file is named, say, “My file.zip” this doesn’t work and the file is just a 1 ko file with inside a message from the server telling 404 not found.
But if the file is named “Myfile.zip” or “My-file.zip” or whatever WITH NO SPACE, this works (“send link to file by email” method), the entire file can be downloaded.
This difference doesn’t exist for the” send file as email attachment” method. Why? I don’t know, but I don’t mind, the main is that it works.
I hope you spent good hollydays Jason.
I install the plugin works fine and I do not what I download is getfile.php :S
Help Me
do not check my e better send me a message through facebook find me Julio Sanchez
thanks.
I have a very interesting problem. The plugin works fine, and the file downloads after registering your email, BUT the download is NEVER complete.
Could this be the download script problem? htaccess problem? Trying to figure it out.
btw site is hosted on dreamhost.
and yes i used both cUrl and get file.
The following instructions may help with this issue and a few others that commonly come up:
—
One piece of the security serves the file through a php script to hide the actual URL of the file. This can timeout for large files on some servers. I’m looking into a way to keep this security without risking a timeout, but in the meantime, you can disable this feature to make the script as a whole work for large files.
edit /ss-downloads/includes/setup.php
Change this line:
define(“GETFILE_REDIRECT”, false);
to be true:
define(“GETFILE_REDIRECT”, true);
What this is telling the script is to have it redirect the browser to the file rather than serve it through the script. Technically, people paying very close attention will be able to see the URL of the actual file, but the average user won’t.
I hope this makes sense and helps.
—
Hi Jason
I can get this to Word – followed all instructions, but no joy – please help
I put i this in [download file="wp-content/uploads/2010/11/filename.txt" ]
the file works
using WordPress 3.0.1.
Would love this to work
Hi
When i click on download either from the page or via a link in the email it downloads the get.php file not the actual file. looking inside the get.php it does contain a link to the correct file..
Any ideas as I really want to use this for a project tonight!!
Cheers
Mat
@Mat, sounds like a memory issue on the server. This happens with some setups and sometimes when the file is very large. To disable a security feature that is getting hung up, you can…
edit /ss-downloads/includes/setup.php
Change this line:
define(“GETFILE_REDIRECT”, false);
to be true:
define(“GETFILE_REDIRECT”, true);
What this is telling the script is to have it redirect the browser to the file rather than serve it through the script. Technically, people paying very close attention will be able to see the URL of the actual file, but the average user won’t.
Lots of people have this problem, so I’m actually going to have future versions default to turn this off and require being turned on (unless I can work around the memory issue).
How do I reset the collected emails and the download report so the history is new and fresh? Please help!
Up above you wrote:
DELETE FROM wp_justemails;
DELETE FROM wp_ss_downloads;
but how do I do that? Thanks!!!
@Marko, those are SQL commands you would run in phpMySQL or something similar accessing the WP database.
i am using your plugin on our menu page so that people might get access to a pdf after submitting their email, it works if the pdf is sent as an attachment, but i cannot get it to work as a download link on the page, it downloads a file of about 4kb instead that is as follows
Warning: file_get_contents() [function.file-get-contents]: URL file-access is disabled in the server configuration in /home/original/public_html/wp-content/plugins/ss-downloads/services/getfile.php on line 60
i don’t quite get what it means, but guess i might need to change something, any help appreciated,
otherwise it seems very a very nifty plugin,
thanks, es
@esmond and others having this problem:
One piece of the security serves the file through a php script to hide the actual URL of the file. This can timeout for large files on some servers. I’m looking into a way to keep this security without risking a timeout, but in the meantime, you can disable this feature to make the script as a whole work for large files.
edit /ss-downloads/includes/setup.php
Change this line:
define(“GETFILE_REDIRECT”, false);
to be true:
define(“GETFILE_REDIRECT”, true);
What this is telling the script is to have it redirect the browser to the file rather than serve it through the script. Technically, people paying very close attention will be able to see the URL of the actual file, but the average user won’t.
I hope this makes sense and helps.
Could this plugin be used in a way where a) the following text could be lowercased (not all Caps): Enter your email address to download [filename] and b) in addition to displaying the file name with a link for download, could we please add a more detailed brief description of what will be downloaded? TIA.
@netingenuity you can take a look at the files in the templates folder of the plugin. You can edit these to do most of what you need. If you have one file, you can add a description that way or setup a case statement based on your filenames.
I’ll take that all into consideration for a future update which may come later in January.
I see my previous comment/question still awaits moderation. Meanwhile, ma I refine my question: Is it possible to let users request to download multiple files and only have to fill out their contact info one time rather than for each doc requested? Here is an example of what I want to be able to produce in WordPress…
http://pendere.com/publications.php
TIA
@NetIngenuity What happens now is they enter their info once and all the forms will turn into links to the download (or links to send an email depending on your settings). That’s pretty interesting what you setup on that publications.php page. Would you have them sent to email then?
Others have suggested a nicer way to show access to the files. If you are a clever enough programmer, you can change the redirect upon form completion to go to a page with all the downloads, and check the cookies I set to see that they entered info and then show the links on that page.
If you need some custom work done, feel free to use our contact form and I’ll get you a quote.
Fabulous work Jason.
Just one thing: having had it working for a moment or two, I’m now not able to do a ‘fresh’ install of the plugin to start again. The shortcode now appears as text on the Page, even with the deletion and reinstallation via WordPress.
How would one reset your wonderful plugin?
Delete the plugins/ss-downloads directory, and reinstall through WordPress. Make sure that your value for “shortcode” on the SS Downloads settings page matches the one you are using in your posts.
Love the plugin, but I am getting this error when I try to activate: Fatal error: Cannot redeclare class mimetype in /Library/WebServer/Sites/hostingclients/themuseumisnotforsale.com/1/wp-content/plugins/ss-downloads/includes/class.mimetype.php on line 70
This should be fixed in the latest version. We are using a mimetype class that other plugins may use. Ours now checks if it is defined first before redefining it. If you still have problems, check your other plugins for this declaration and fix it.
Thank you very much for giving me this option to increase my email bank. I have fifteen thousand email IDs but I dont know how to use them. Can any one would like to help me?
Hello, I’m Luca. I fount your plugin for WordPress and i’d like to use, thanks for your great job. One question: I have to organize a page where I have to give the possibility to download two .pdf files, sending them the link by Email. With your plugin I have two boxes where other have to write two times their Email address (in the case they are interested in both files). Is there the possibility to have just one box where they write their Email address and then they decide if receive the link of one or two files?
Also: is there the possibility, after a person has clicked to receive the link by email, to redirect to a page for say “thanks for ….”?
Last: I am testing your plugin sending emails to two my email address, one is in Gmail. I notice that Gmail consider the Email like a spam, it is correct?
Many thanks for your help.
Regards.
Fantastic plugin
I had to use the cURL method to get it to work since I was having the issue of the function GETFILE_REDIRECT . No biggie though since cURL works just as good.
Is it possible to make it work as a widget too?
Thank you again for being awesome on sharing this wonderful plugin.
One way I’ve found that working really well is the “sent as email attachment” option, this solves alot of problems otherwise.
However, there are problem in the Full Report function, where the download user’s email isn’t showing properly, (showing only valid@gmail.com in email column) would be great to have this function working! as I have multiple files and would like to find out who’s interested in what content.
Ah! awesomeness – I found the post =) This is the plugin I’ll be testing out1 THANKS – I’ll be checking back after I’ve installed =D
Hi Jason, I want to expand the email that is sent … but I cannot find where the template is, I would like to change the layout and remove “Note: You must use the same computer and browser that you submitted your email address from to access the file.”, Appreciate your great work here!
Andre, it’s not templated per se, but you can tweak that email content by editing services/addemail.php. Check around line 48.
Be sure to backup your code if you ever upgrade the plugin… though not really sure when that upgrade is going to come. I’ll consider adding a nicer way to override that email in a future release.
Hi.
I really like this plugin. BUT..its not working for me, and I’ve tried both cURL template and file gets content template… I’m not quite sure why…
Take a look:
http://lauralynndesigns.net/inboxer/whitepapers/
Never mind, I figured it out. It was the short code, I had a alert box [download] , I went to change the shortcode, for whater reason it wouldn’t save always would revert back to download, so I had to dive into the php and change.
Thanks for the update on this. I’ll take a look and see if our code for saving the shortcode tag is sound. I know that WP updated some things with how “options” work.
This is a great plugin, but I think something went wrong. I had it working for a while, but after a couple of plugin installs for other things, The form is not working anymore. I put an email address in and it just resorts back to the original form. HELP!! Here is the link to the page I am having trouble with.
http://slimbaby.com/?page_id=4
Jeff, can you email me. If you can give me access to your site, I can take a look and see what is going on.
[...] Stranger Studios Blog | SS-Downloads WordPress Plugin A simple form for WordPress where a reader must submit an email address before they're allowed to download a file. [...]
This has been a great plugin for us and thank you.
Do you know if there are any issues arising from the recent WP update to 3.1.1 as it seems to have stopped working?
Thanks again.
Steve,
Can you be more specific about what is not working? I just upgraded to 3.1.2 and the script is working on this page. Maybe it is a plugin conflict with a plugin that also updated. Can you email me with the errors you getting so I can try to see what is happening.
This plugin still seems to haev some bugs unfortuantely. specifically Firefox Browser bugs?
When trying to set up an mp3 for download – it works in IE (althought it always downloads as ‘getfile.mp3′ instead of the name of the file itself. But on Firefox, the site usually crashes when clicking the download link – or sometimes it downloads about 6 seconds of the mp3 – not the whole file. Any ideas? Would really love to get this working.
Sounds like a server/memory issue. Try the GETFILE_REDIRECT fix described in the update of this post.
Hi Jason, if one does want to put 5 different links on the same page they function all together, how to separate the links?
Lagarrigue, others have requested various features to address this. I have not figured out an elegant solution. In the meantime you can make one page that links to subpages with 1 download form each. This may be a cleaner setup for you.
If you are a coder, you can take a stab at editing the files in the templates and services folders to show the forms differently. You may want to pass an extra parameter after getting the email to tell the page which form submitted, and then have that template highlighted, etc.
If you have a more specific request, let me know.
Hi Jason,
I love your plugin, however I am not able to get the Download Full Report feature to work for the download stats. When I click the link it takes to a “Nothing Found” 404 page.
Any suggestions / ideas ?
Thanks!
Fantastic plugin! I’ve installed the plugin and everything seems to be working fine except that the “File Downloads” fields are not populating with any download details. However, the email addresses are showing up just fine in the “Collected Email Addresses” field.
Is there a setting that needs to be set for the report to work?
Hi, guys. I’m working on this problem and hope to have an update in the plugins repo soon. Thanks.
The original errors I was getting was due to testing on my wamp localhost.
On my actual site I noticed once you submit your email the page remains with your “download is ready box”. Can this be reset.
Also during testing both “collected email address” and “file downloads” areas need to be cleared how do you clear these 2 box’s
Otherwise it works great,
Thanks, Bob
You address your second question in your follow up. Thanks for that.
RE the “download is ready box”, you can change the content of that box by editing the files in the template folder of the plugin. It uses a session variable to figure out if you have already submitted your email address (and so won’t ask for it again). So you have to close your browser and come back to retest the form.
If you want to show the download link only once per session, you’ll need to add code somewhere to unset that variable (I’d have to look up what it’s called).
FYI, I pushed version 1.3.3 to the WP repository and it should be available shortly. This update fixes an issue with changing the “download” shortcode and also sets the GETFILE_REDIRECT constant to true by default.
This last change has security impacts on the locations of your files. So you may want to add this code to your functions.php file or similar:
define(“GETFILE_REDIRECT”, false);
Jason,
After playing around with this plugin the “collect email” and “file download” needed to be cleaned out to start fresh I created a small post explaining to beginners how to use PHPmyadmin to clear these 2 tables at http://2bretired.com/wordpress/?p=1153
hey jason,
great work on this plugin. i’m having a slight issue. The plugin works great when I set it to display the download link, but if I set it up to email the link, whenever you click that link in the email you just get this:
“This file is protected. You need to enter an email address to gain access. Please contact us if this is unexpected. Back to homepage.”
I had multiple people test and it happens to everyone. I saw someone posted about this above, but didn’t follow up with any resolution.
Any ideas?
@Jack, one thing to note is that you have to use the same browser as the one you clicked on to open the file (it’s still looking for that session). If you turn off the GET FILE option in the settings, it should work in any browser then (because it won’t be sending traffic through the getfile.php script.)
hi, i m looking for W.P. function, like ” download before click AD”, the closest one I found is SS-Downloads. Will you add the function in the future? thx.
@Hugo, do you mean something like “click this ad to download _____”? I’m not a fan of that kind of trickery. The ad providers don’t like when you encourage false clicks like that. I don’t think I’ll be adding that feature any time soon.
Hugo, do you want to show an ad to click on before downloading? That’s against most ad service TOS, so I wouldn’t program that. You might be able to figure out how to tweak this plugin to do that if you have some coding skillz.
Hi. I’m looking for a plugin where a customer can download/and print an order form to order products via snail mail. It sounds like your plugin would would do that?
It should work. But I would just put a link to the catalog unless you think it’s more valuable for your business to capture an email address than to get a catalog out.
I’m gettig this error on the download page:
Warning: file_get_contents(http://mysite.com/wp-content/plugins/ss-downloads/templates/emailform.php?file=4v-zR6fc6f%2F9vaROBr%2FRtBct_hh.vBx&title=Order+Form&postid=321&ssdmsg=) [function.file-get-contents]: failed to open stream: HTTP request failed! HTTP/1.1 404 Not Found in /home/site/public_html/wp-content/plugins/ss-downloads/ss-downloads.php on line 165
Check the /includes/setup.php file in the plugin and manually set the plugin directory constants.
Hi, I’d love to give this a try. Looks very simple, easy to use. Problem is, when I activate it it appears to break the CSS on my blog–everything goes askew. Any hints on this?
@Mark, can you link to your site that is broken? Or let me know what theme you are using? Thanks.
I was testing out the Plug-in and it worked fine until I started to test it with different e-mails. It seems that it stores the e-mail that was put in first, so when I try to input a different e-mail I can’t. Even when I clear all history on my browser and go back, the download box still says “your download is ready”…Does this plug-in only allow one e-mail per computer? Anyways to fix this issue?
It uses PHP sessions to save that an email was already provided. This is so it only asks users once. To test it multiple times, you’ll have to kill all of your browser windows to clear the session. Then visit the site an try again.
i can download the file even if i input a wrong email. It is much better to send the download link to the email provided or it is very much appreciated if you can make a “Subscribe RSS to Download”.
Yeah, we check for a valid format, but you can’t really validate the email unless you use the “send link to email” mode. Find that in the plugin settings.
Is it possible to show a counter stats on the frontend??
Great idea. You could do this by editing the template (see the FAQ of 1.4.1). Insert the download counter like this (didn’t test): get_var(“SELECT COUNT(*) FROM $wpdb->ss_downloads WHERE file = ‘” . $wpdb->escape($file) . “‘”)?>
Jason thanks for the easy-to-use plugin. I know some people have problems with it, but for emailing a file to an email address it is perfect under FF, Chrome and Safari.
A feature requests
1) Can you increment the “Files downloads” section for email delivery too please? Emailing a file should count as a download.especially if there are 2 or more files available from a site. The wp_ss_download table should also populated so full report works.
2) Can you make the settings individually configurable via the shortcode? i.e. make some files available as email delivery [download "FileA.pdf" title="File A" delivery="email"] and other files delivered via email link [download "FileB.mp3" title="My audio gift" delivery="email-link"] and others via download [download "FileC.mp4" title="My video presentation" delivery="link-file"]
It makes sense to be able to over-ride every option from the config in the shortcode.
RE #1 Good point.
RE #2 Good idea.
Not sure when I can get around to these.
After submitting an email address for send a link to file by email, the form resets to “Enter your email address to download …” Shouldn’t that say “Check your inbox for the link to download …”
I’m hoping the new version fixes these. Could be some kind of server/plugin conflict (lots of them with this plugin).
Let me know if you still see them, and we’ll try to chat offline about what the cause might be.
Is perfect for 1 file, but when trying to collect different email lists for different files, it can’t help me. It would be great if it had tabs to separate different files.
Right. I haven’t figured out how I would want to do that. You’ll need to either keep each file on its own page or use a more robust plugin like http://www.paidmembershipspro.com to manage your subscriptions and file downloads.
Hi,
I was wondering if you could check this page:
http://www.microtissues.com/blog/download-cell-types-white-paper/
Everytime I type in an email it just brings me back to the page asking for my email. Then after a couple times of plugging in random emails I can get the download link. Seems like something funky is going on. Any thoughts?
-Brian
The plugin uses session variables to tell if an email has been entered. This is commonly available on most hosts, but maybe not on yours. This link might help you figure out a way to enable it. You can check your phpinfo(); to see if this is really what is going on too.
http://support.qualityunit.com/knowledgebase/general-questions/how-to-enable-session-support-for-php.html
Any idea what I need to add to php.ini to get this to work?
That article was not that clear what I needed to add.
All I have in php.ini now is memory=20mb
I am using 1and1 as well.
Thank you for helping.
In case my website link is stopping my comments, I’ve removed it.
I was using 1.3.3 but have just updated to 1.4.1.
I’ll rerun the tests when I get a chance
I’m behind on moderation. Thanks for trying 1.4.1.
Nobody else seem to have this fundamental error – I have the plugin installed, add the shortcode into the page (tried html and visual) but all I see on the finished web page is the text. The plug in definitely is activated, and i have deactivated all other plug ins, changed the theme and tried on 2 different servers – am i using it incorrectly? http://www.just-worldwide.com/portfolio-item/european-payers/
Sometimes when you cut and paste [download file="http://www.arealurl.com"] the URL part becomes an tag link, which would break that.
Your example page is down for me or I might have more input.
Here’s another demo page I’ll leave up with the shortcode added and the result. Any advice greatly appreciated. As aforementioned, have tried this on different themes, stripped away all the other plug ins, but still no joy.
http://www.just-worldwide.com/demo-page/
Aha! seems obvious now, but for some reason the default shotcode had been changed to so i simply changed it to ‘download’ again and all is well. Great plugin!
I installed this plugin in the sidebar of my wordpress site and everything works fine. The one issue I have noticed is that when you submit an email address it loads in a different page of my website before giving me the file download button. Is this a known issue and/or fixable?
Hmmm. Some browsers do that.
You can move the download.php template into your theme folder. Then fix the require there to point to your wp-load.php. Then remove the target=”_blank” in the link.
Is there any Chance to add some more Fields to the Form, just to get a liitle bit more Details about WHO is requesting this Information?
I am using the FS Contactform right now, but i am missing your Functionality about the attached File.
So a mix of both would be FANTASTIC.
But some more Fields in your Plugin would be FANTASTIC as well.
Many Thanks in Advance,
Joe
I’ll consider that for a future version, but don’t forsee having a lot of time to work on that. With a little php knowledge it would be an easy tweak for someone willing to do it. If someone does. I’ll post it here or (better yet) include it in the plugin.
Hi Jason,
I installed your plugin and everything seems to work fine until I click to download the file, it gives me a 403 Forbidden error.
I tried with two different files (one on the same server and the other in a different hosting location).
Here is a link where I’m testing it:
http://missionsbox.org/ss-download/
I tried adding both code suggestions into the funtions.php (one at the time), but it didn’t seem to make any difference. Currently everything is back to the original settings. If also tried changing the template method and the same error displays.
One more question, is it possible to add another field to the form (i.e. “name”).
Thanks
Jose, check the file permissions on ss-downloads/services/getfile.php. It should be executable by the web server. Also, check that the file you are trying to serve is readable by the web server user.
You’ll want to look into using chmod and/or chown on the files on the server.
I hope that makes sense. I can’t get more specific without knowing your hosting setup. But that error message is pretty clear that either (1) the getfile.php script is not readable/executable or (2 – more likely) the files you are serving aren’t readable by the user apache uses to execute the getfile.php script.
Hi Jason, I figured it out, its a .htaccess firewall I’m using that was blocking something, now its working, but it seem like there is an issue with link that have blank spaces (%20)…
One more question, is it possible to add another field to the form (i.e. “name”).
Where are the emails stored? Can they be used for promotion for some newsletter plugin. Can emails be exported?
Goto Tools –> SS Downloads in your admin and you should see a list of email addresses. You can copy and paste the comma-separated list or export the full report to CSV and copy the email column, etc.
As with Jose, I would also like to have the option of a Name field. It will add a lot more leverage to marketing potential. Thanks.
Not timeline yet, but I’d like to get this out at some point. Might be a premium plugin.
How does the script send out emails? Would this count towards a hosting accounts emails sent on say GoDaddy?
It uses the mail function. May update this to use wp_mail, which you can use other plugins to make work with any POP/SMTP server (e.g. Google Mail). As written, it would count toward your limit.
I used your plugin for a new song release on Five Iron Frenzy’s website and after about 3k downloads I got this error:
“Could not instantiate mail function.
Warning: Cannot modify header information – headers already sent by (output started at /home/content/69/8479569/html/sites/fiveironfrenzy.com/site/wp-includes/class-phpmailer.php:586) in /home/content/69/8479569/html/sites/fiveironfrenzy.com/site/wp-includes/pluggable.php on line 934″
It gives me this same error on all the pages I try and use the plugin on. Any idea on what might be the problem?
Sounds like you hit some kind of email limit on your server.
Two questions:
1) Can I deliver (image) files *without* requiring a user to be signed in or enter an email address? I really don’t care if they are. I simply want to offer a download link (might require user verification later).
2) Will the shortcode work in an image lightbox? (My initial test indicates no, but hoping there’s a way to make it work?)
P.S. I’m particularly trying to get this to work with NGG (adding a download link in the image lightbox).
very nice plugin thanks
Hi, Do you have any plans for updating this plugin for wordpress 3.3? It looks like exactly what I need, but I am unable to get it to work on my website.
I’ll test this out in 3.3 and try to get an update out there. Maybe this week. Thanks.