dtynan

Yeah I was confused by that as well. I ended up first setting the whole thing up using the old 3.3.6 version, which does work, but generates a lot of SQL warnings and errors and such that scared me. Later, I did trace through those closely and it looks like they don’t actually cause any problems despite the fact that they look broken.

So, anyway, I did move to the latest Download Monitor and it also works (there are a couple of little gotchas here & there, but generally either the old or new DM will work for most of the stuff you might try). Using the new DM will get rid of those errors you’re seeing (which made me feel better, so that’s the one I use).

You need to use Download Monitor plugin, not Download Manager.

I haven’t used polylang, but am slightly familiar with other multi-language plugins.

You didn’t provide an example page, so I can’t really see what is happening. If you hover your moues over the link to the download, does it display the URL in the bottom of the browser or does it look empty? (or, alternatively, View Source and go find that link & see if the href points at an actual URL or if it is empty.

If it is not empty & it’s pointing back at your system to like the EBD plugin directory with a bunch of random characters on the end of if it’s pointing at something like /download/34 or /download/28 or something like that, then we know the URL did make it into the page from the ajax POST that you did when you hit the submit button. That means that something is interfering when you click the link (more likely), or the link is there but the file is somehow missing (unlikely). If this is roughly what happens, then I suspect polylang is interfering when you click the link and putting you back at the homepage. I saw a couple of posts on their support page where polylang redirected people to the homepage in some other cases where people clicked on things.

On the other hand, if the URL on the page is empty or it actually points at the homepage when you hover over the download link to the PDF, then we know that polylang probably interfered with the ajax submit/result, or it somehow messed with Download Monitor.

It’s pretty impossible for me to say without trying out the page. Also you putting in here what your EBD shortcode was. Also, I’m fairly certain EBD can have trouble with certain foreign characters of filenames or titles of files that uploaded into Download Monitor. Therefore, you need to be testing using very simple english filenames & file titles only, in order to eliminate that potential source of problems.

All that said, I think it’s pretty unlikely that you’re going to get this to work the way you want. For one, EBD does not have any country files (it’s not set up for translation) and it has some static text in the PHP code. Polylang is not going to be able to intercede and change those messages from english to french (or whatever). You could directly edit the email-before-download.php file & set it up for translation and then you could use Loco Translate perhaps, but that’s a lot of work.

Additionally, EBD stores information about the files in the database. I suspect you are going to run into trouble due to that. Also, depending on settings, EBD may directly pull files by opening them off the filesystem, but in other cases it may do a Location: for the file (a redirect). There is the Force Download setting in Download Monitor for a file (and that’s also an optional attribute in the EBD shortcode). You may have to test with that turned on & off and see if maybe one way will work. Another possibility is to use the file=”someurl” attribute in the EBD shortcode, which is normally use for remote files (URLs to files on another webserver .. files you did not upload into Download Monitor). I don’t know if that might be a way to make things work, but you might try that as a last resort.

Because EBD fires off shortcodes for Download Monitor & for Contact Form 7 within its PHP code, that seems like another area that might break things. Also, EBD uses Ajax and DOM manipulation and string replacing on the page,all of which seem like possible problems for polylang. But, who knows, maybe none of that will matter and you can get it working…. seems like a longshot though.

EBD actually sends out 2 emails:

• One email goes to the web surfer that filled in the form you created in CF7 .. the form where he puts his name and his email address. Assuming you didn’t put anything in the 9.1 email template setting then, by default, the email will contain a link the user can click to download the file (or it might have the file attached if you chose that option) and that’s it. There won’t be any other text in there. I believe the link text will be the File Title (not the filename). The File Title is what you typed in when you uploaded the file into Download Monitor (typically some sort of description).
• The other email is the notification email to the wordpress administrator. This email has like a line of text saying something like “The downloaded file name(s):” and then it will display the File Title as normal text (not an html link). (again, this is the File Title, not the filename)

When you are testing your form, it’s best to be logged into your email account that you’re using for the WordPress admin for your site AND to also be logged in to a test email account that you made up. That way you can see both emails arrive (if they arrive).

In your case, since you are getting an email that does not have a working link in it, my guess is that that is the notification email to the WordPress admin. The other email is probably getting blocked by the email provider (yahoo, gmail, whatever) for the email account that you typed into the form. That happens a lot.

This is a long explanation .. I think I’ll stop here & wait for you to reply and tell me if you’re only getting 1 email (probably the notification) or both emails & the link is actually messed up in the non-notification email.

I have not seen that exact behavior, so I am not sure why that would happen, but I have a guess. I don’t want to take the time to go walk through the code to figure out exactly what happens, so this will be a little vague & possibly slightly incorrect, but it’s roughly accurate:

When you view the page with the EBD shortcode for the very first time, it will put some information in the database related to the download(s) you have included in the shortcode. This information includes stuff like some of the IDs and possibly the filename and other attributes, including whether or not it has been downloaded. If you are flipping around settings, making new pages with the same ID, etc. it won’t actually store a new row in the DB, instead using the one from before. I believe that that can cause issues sometimes — that is why I usually have people make a brand new file with a filename they have never used before, upload it to Download Monitor (ensuring a new download ID), and make a new CF7 form (ensuring a new ID), when they are having trouble. This eliminates any problem of leftover data in the DB somehow messing things up. That troubleshooting step usually works out for folks. In your case, my guess is that when you mark it as an attachment, that the database is updated to indicate you downloaded the file as soon as the email is sent. The act of marking the file downloaded somehow changes the behavior such that when you then go turn off attachments off & try again, things work. That’s just a guess though – I could be wrong. It may not be the has_downloaded field (or whatever it’s called) that is the bit that flips to “reset” things for you … it could just be the logic path in the code for attachments does something else in the database to “reset” you. You could probably achieve the same “reset” without turning on attachments by uploading a new file (with a name you’ve never uploaded before) and making a new shortcode with that new download_id I suspect.

Sorry that’s vague, but hopefully it helps.

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.

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.