When you say “EBD log”, do you mean the CSV log file downloaded from the top of the EBD settings page?
I was a little unclear from your statement — it sounded like you’re saying there are no email addresses in that file but then you did a test using your own info and the email -did- show up in there? is that what you meant or am I misunderstanding it?
Hi – sorry if it was unclear.
I am using EBD and have CF7 installed and Download Monitor
I have set up a CF7 form that people need to fill in. I ask for their first name and email address. Once they have done that, a link to the download file is sent to the email address.
According to Download Monitor, one specific file has been downloaded 26 times. In the Download Monitor log, I see rows of “non member” entries with corresponding IP addresses. The EBD CSV file, however, does not show any email addresses.
To test the process, I entered my own name and email address in the form. This worked, and I received an email with a link to the file. When I looked in the EBD CSV I say my details listed.
I’m not sure why this is happening. I’ve checked for other places where there might be a direct link, but it seems that the only access to the download is through EBD.
Any ideas> (Maybe I’m missing something obvious).
Cheers
I think I understand. So in the EBD CSV file are you seeing corresponding entries to the Download Monitor log (in other words, are you seeing 26 lines for X download w/no email addresses associated)?
My guess is that somehow people are getting to your download file without going through the EBD form (you should get a notification email for everyone that goes through the form .. I assume when you tested it yourself you received 2 emails — one being the one with a link that goes to the email address entered on the form and the other being the notification email that tells the wordpress admin that someone downloaded something).
Have you tried running some of the IP addresses through whois? (the ip addresses that downloaded the file 26 times). Maybe they are mostly Google and other web crawlers…? Perhaps you have Indexes turned on (assuming you are running apache) and web crawlers are able to navigate down into your download directory. For example, a crawler might be programmed to guess “yoursite.com/download” and then see what it gets. Or even “yoursite.com/download/?” where ? is say, 1 thru 100, or something like that. Then, it might get into “yoursite.com/download/50” and if you had Indexes on then it would get a directory listing and be able to crawl any files in there.
If you don’t have Indexes on then that makes it tougher to figure out. Could you somehow have gotten your download file URL into your sitemap maybe? If you go into Download Monitor and edit your download then over on the right side near the top of the screen will be a URL. That URL will directly access your download file (without needing to go through EBD). Maybe that URL has somehow gotten out on the web & into google? Or maybe you’ve accidentally linked to it somewhere on your site?
If nothing else, you could go into Download Monitor and change your download point from “download” to something unguessable. Then, reset the download stats in Download Monitor & EBD. Then wait a few days and see if anyone manages to get to it.
Could all 26 downloads be you rather than people out on the net? Maybe you are using proxy system and every time you accessed the file yourself (while you were setting everything up) the access came from one of a few proxy IPs that your proxy service uses? (farfetched guess, but possible)
Hi
Thanks so much for taking the time to help me.
Actually, apart from the test I did, I’m not seeing any entries in the EBD CSV. No blank lines.
Good point about Google crawling the download link. I’ll look into changing the name of the download folder.
I did do a whois on some of the IP addresses, but it wasn’t clear whether they were google addresses or not…
And,,,now that you mention it, I am not getting any notification emails when someone downloads something. Maybe I haven’t got things set up correctly …
Oh, with regards the possibility that the 26 downloads are me. I don’t think so. A lot of the downloads occurred recently when I posted the link (to the post) on LinkedIn. That got a lot of attention, and the downloads correspond to that.
I’ll go and double check the setup.
Thanks. If you have any other advice/ideas, would love to hear it.
– Mark
If you don’t see much in the EBD CSV file, then it sounds like all those downloads came via people going to the download (but not going through your EBD form page to get there). That is not really an EBD thing, if so. I suggest you remove your download (the file itself & the entry in download monitor), then change your download path starting fragment in the Download Monitor configuration to be a different less guessable name, then reupload your file into Download Monitor. That will start you over with no accesses on that file & it will have a new URL (because of the new download path thingy). Then you can keep an eye on it & see if it increments. If so, your best bet is to check your access logs for your webserver to figure out how they are getting to it (actually I guess you could do that now & find those prior accesses in there and figure out what’s up).
On the notification email not showing up, that is an unusual problem. If you are set to “both” or “email” then EBD sends 2 emails — 1 goes to the email address that the website visitor types into the form and the other emails normally goes to the wordpress administrator (or whatever email address you put in the CF7 To: field on the Mail tab [which normally defaults to the wordpress administrator]). It is common for the 1st email to not get there — the one that goes to the website visitor. That has to do with the From: of the email not matching up with the system that is sending it and then the mail hosting provider (gmail, yahoo, etc) rejects it. There are ways to fix that. However, the other email, the “notification email”, almost always works because it’s going to the wordpress administrator & everyone normally has that email working because otherwise they’d never get any email from their wordpress installation to let them know things.
So, you should double-check that you have the wordpress administrator email address in there on the CF7 form you are using (in the Mail tab). Just put the email address, don’t do any of the extra text with your name and the less-than and greater-than symbols — keep it simple, just the email address. If that’s what you have then it should work. If it’s not working, then I suggest you try adding a WordPress User and then deleting that User. That should cause a notification email to be sent to the wordpress administrator. If you don’t get that one, then you know your wordpress can’t send email and it’s unrelated to any plugin…
hope that gets you going in the right direction
