The EBD shortcode goes into a page that you make in wordpress. It might work in a post, but I’m not sure, I haven’t tried it.
If your post page is special in some way — like dynamically generated, I think it’s very unlikely that it would work right, but I could be wrong on that.
Looking at your screenshots, I think the fact that your URLs are localhost is very weird. If I am a user on my system out on the internet somewhere & I go to your website & I encounter a url with localhost in it then my browser is going to go back to my own computer — not your website — for that URL. So, that seems very wrong to me.
You should focus on getting Download Monitor working first. You should be able to get to the file & download it using the Download Monitor URL in the top-right area of that page and it should be an external URL, not a localhost URL (a localhost URL might work for testing if you are developing on your own local system with a local instance of wordpress installed, but once you deploy you’ll need to change the host & probably the uploaded file ID since you’ll need to upload that file on your server so it’s correct filepaths & ID & such get into the database).
Hi @dtynan, thanks for your reply.
Don’t worry about the localhost, I am indeed developing on a local machine which is the actual copy of the online website and I never had problems doing testing with other plugins.
Download monitor works. The URL on the top right is redirecting me to the other link with S2member code and the download starts so it’s all good. What’s not is the email before download part.
So following your advice I created a page, not post, with the shortcode in it http://i.imgur.com/jjeZzn0.jpg but it doesn’t change anything.
Is that correct?
Ok, so if you have created the CF7 form on the server and used that contact form ID (not one from your localhost) and if you have uploaded the file into Download Monitor on the server system and used that download ID (not one from your localhost), then that sounds ok.
You haven’t actually described what the problem is, so I don’t know if, for example, you have it set to Inline and you are not getting the link. Or, if you have it set to Both and don’t get the link or the email. Or if you do get the link, but it doesn’t download the file, etc.
EBD may try to directly access the file off the filesystem, so you may have to set or unset that option in Download Monitor … the force download option or whatever it’s called. I think one way does a Location: command (maybe) and the other way opens the file off the disk. I suspect the opening the file off the disk isn’t going to work well if you’re wanting S2Member to intercede there, so you probably need it to request it by having the browser go to the URL (Location:) or opening a socket or something. I’m not that familiar with doing it that way, so I don’t know if that Download Monitor setting for Force Download or whatever will work…
You may have to instead use that file= option in your shortcode. I believe you do like file=URL where URL is the URL to the file.
Make sure you are not masking the URL (in the EBD settings)
the force download option in EBD I mean, not Download Monitor.
actually, probably either way … either set it or unset it in the Download Monitor for the file or include or not include the force_download in the EBD shortcode. Not really sure any of that will make a difference .. you’ll just have to try it various ways I think.
You could also pay the $10 support fee to M&S Consulting (the plugin authors) — they may know more about this than me … you’re doing something I haven’t seen anyone try before.
Hi, thanks again for your time and effort much appreciated.
I’ll have a go on the online website when possible and I’ll get back to you, maybe it’s the issue.
Regarding the shortcode, I really don’t know how to write the link with it.
Right now, I think I understand what’s going on after looking for some extra info. I have DM & CF7 installed, I created a form in CF7 to get the iD for the page shortcode. However, that form doesn’t appear on the website (intentional), which means the end user do not have to fill any form when he’s downloading a file because I don’t want him to. Why, because he needs to be logged in to download a file and WordPress has all his info already, I just want to know what this guy downloaded.
Excuse my dummy question, but does email before download only works when a user fills the CF7 form? If that’s the case, I’ve got it all wrong and that solution is not for me.
Digression outside of this post: I’ll expand the purpose on my installation, maybe you can help.
As I mentioned, to download a file on my website, a user has to be logged-in with an account he created via S2memberPro. S2 sends me a log email saying that user subscribed and all the info he filled in the form are put in the WordPress user DB.
So when the user is logged-in and downloads a file, I want to get a log email saying this user downloaded this file, but I would also like to get that entry into the WP user database, which at the moment is not possible with all the solutions I’ve tried.
So I wanted to use Email before download for its log file but I think it will be filled if the user fills a CF7 before the download.
Yeah I don’t think you should use Email Before Download. The point of EBD is to make the user fill in a form that has his name & his email address. Once he does that, then he gets a link to the file (either on the screen or via an email sent to him). EBD is built to require the input form with the name & the email address. It’s not gonna work without it.
I once looked through many, many plugins that handled downloads. My memory is hazy on this, but I think I have a bunch of bookmarks. I think you might be better off with just a download manager type plugin like an Easy Digital Downloads (but without the payment subscription stuff) or something like just Download Monitor that could send an email when a download happens & also somehow updates the account record (I’m assuming you mean you’d like to see it in the user’s screen the user mgmt part of wordpress). I’ll check my bookmarks & see if anything jumps out at me that might be worth a shot.
also, have you asked the s2member people about what you’re trying to do? s2member has a bunch of features & I believe download management stuff is one of the things it can do (not sure if it can do exactly what you want though)
I briefly looked at s2member and its capabilities and it looks to me like it can do what you’re trying to do, but it may take some work.
It looks like possibly turning on the basic file restriction and setting the download limit to 999999 for level 0 might restrict downloads of a given file to logged-in users. Then, I think there may be a notification for file download that you can configure via the admin menus, though I’m not sure on that. If not, you can do the notifications via shortcodes in the page/post where you put the file download link (which you would use like [s2file] or some similar shortcode. That would get you the email notification. It looks like s2member automatically tracks the downloads for a user in its database tables, but I don’t know if that data is exposed anywhere. You might have to use the api to pull that data, maybe something from http://www.s2member.com/codex/stable/s2member/files/c_ws_plugin__s2member_files/
I suggest you contact them for help. You may also want to read over this old item from 2011, where someone wants to do something similar (but note that it may be easier now) – http://www.primothemes.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=10126#p21046
You should also review these items:
http://s2member.com/kb-article/hacking-s2member-plugin-w-hooksfilters-for-wordpress/
https://s2member.com/kb-article/building-an-api-notification-handler-webhook/
http://s2member.com/kb-article/gettingsetting-custom-registrationprofile-fields-configured-w-s2member/
and perhaps http://s2member.com/kb-article/s2if-simple-shortcode-conditionals/
and probably spend time in their api docs
http://www.s2member.com/codex/stable/s2member/api_functions/package-summary/
I suspect it would work out best to use the s2member stuff to get what you want. However, it’s possible you could cobble something together using plugins. Maybe something like the File Away plugin ( https://wordpress.org/plugins/file-away/ ) to control access to the download link and then the AMR Users plugin ( https://wordpress.org/plugins/amr-users/ ) to get downloaded files info out of the database & into a display. However, that might not work & could be difficult .. just throwing it out there.
Good luck.
Dude, I really appreciate your help. To be honest, it’s quite rare to get people really looking into user’s issues like this, thanks a lot.
I’m still waiting for S2 reply.
I had a look at this post alreadyhttp://www.primothemes.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=14084 which talks about it, but I don’t have the skills to understand or implement what they are saying.
In the meantime, I’ll have a look at all your links see how I can do that. Thanks again. Have a great weekend
Flo
