dtynan

EBD does call shortcodes for Download Monitor or for Contact Form 7, but it won’t take extra parameters and pass them along in the call. There is no way to do what you’re trying to do without modifying the plugin PHP code or perhaps using javascript to restyle the button after it’s been displayed (might be difficult). If you want to modify the PHP code, search email-before-download.php for “do_shortcode” and you’ll find a couple places where it calls the [download] shortcode from Download Monitor. Note that in some cases, those are inside an if/else and you might actually be on the else-branch part (and the else doesn’t call the shortcode, instead it just has the hardcoded html to create the link, which would make it even more difficult)

Great, glad to hear you got it working.

Originally, when I first set up EBD for my own site, I first went & read the past 50 or 100 or so support messages. I did that because I wanted to do some custom stuff & I wanted to see if anyone else had done that. Secondarily, I had first installed the older version of Download Monitor that is mentioned in the Description for EBD. However, I saw SQL errors that made me nervous, so I went into the code. I saw that those issues weren’t causing any actual problems, but at the same time, I saw where it looked like EBD supported a newer Download Monitor. So, I ended up moving to the latest stuff. In the process of doing all that, I became somewhat familiar with the PHP code.

So, while I haven’t tried everything & I certainly don’t know everything about it, I have a decent understanding & have run into a lot of the issues that people run across. In your case, I think the FAQ is missing that info, but you can find it on the Screenshots page ( https://wordpress.org/plugins/email-before-download/screenshots/ ) . There is a really old support item on here where the plugin authors, M&S Consulting, point that out to someone & I just repeated their advice.

I should point out that M&S Consulting also has their own website outside of the wordpress plugins page and it has additional screenshots & examples there which can sometimes help folks ( http://www.mandsconsulting.com/products/wp-email-before-download ). I believe they have that link on the Description page as well.

And, for a mere $10 you can get paid support from the M&S folks. I think I’m depriving them of that fee now & then — it’s such a low amount that I hope it doesn’t matter…

(I type super super fast so it only takes a couple of minutes to blast way too much info at people on this forum. I’ve been on a kick of just helping folks out on here for the last few months).

In the Contact 7 set up, there is a form that you can customize. That form is what is displayed to the end user (the webpage visitor). You must make sure that the fields you ask for there include a field named your-name and another field named your-email (see the screenshot page at https://wordpress.org/plugins/email-before-download/screenshots/ )

That must happen for things to work. Then, you CAN customize some messages, which is what you are doing when you are setting things in the Email Before Download config settings. If I were you, I would get everything working first, before customizing any messages. But, anyway, there is no [first-name] so that won’t work. You can use [requesting_name], which will be substituted with the value of the your-name field that the webpage visitor typed into the form. If you don’t have a your-name field then there won’t be anything to replace the [requesting_name] placeholder with.

Ok I tried out your form & it emailed me and it had a good link in it, so the email part & finding the right file all look good. I assume you have it set to ‘Both’ (both link & email) and the link is not showing up is the problem.

Looks to me like it is not using AJAX and instead is just POSTing like a normal http form post. Normally, that is caused by plugins or themes that are conflicting somehow — usually ajax-related plugins are the problem. That could be it.

Or, it might be caused by a javascript issue of some type. I notice your page has a couple of errors. You have a: uncaught TypeError: Cannot read property ‘NoConflict’ on Undefined.
That looks related to the way jquery is being called. You have another similar message related to your Superfish menu.

Those errors could be the issue, though I kind of doubt it.

Another possibility is that you’re on the new Download Monitor 1.9, which I haven’t tried yet. I very much doubt it could cause this problem, but it might somehow be an issue.

In all likelihood, it’s related to your page — plugins or themes that are conflicting somehow. I suggest disabling some stuff & see if you can get it to work then. Particularly stuff that might affect http and/or ajax.

I don’t see a download_id value in your HTML. I think your shortcode is probably wrong. What do you have for your shortcode? (please post it in here exactly as it is on your page).

I’ve never tried using remote files (external files via url). I do recall seeing something about making sure Masked is off. I don’t know if that still applies or not, but i think it does … I want to say that it just does a Location: to the URL, unless it’s masked in which case it tries to read the file off the filesystem. Though, I could be wrong. I remember something about curl enabled also, though I don’t know if that’s really needed.

I’d try it with Masked off (and expiration off). You might want to add info like the version of the various plugins (EBD can run with the latest Download Monitor or some people use the older version mentioned on the EBD wordpress page).

You can also pay $10 to the M&S Consulting folks (the plugin authors). They know more about using external links I’m sure.

Yeah that’s a good idea. I don’t know if M&S Consulting is continuing to work on this plugin or not. I want to say that they did a small update not that long ago (and maybe didn’t rev the version #), but I could be confusing it with something else .. I don’t really remember & am too lazy to go check 🙂

M&S does read this forum, so maybe they’ll take your suggestion and roll it in with a new version at some point. I think with a little bit more documentation and a couple of tweaks like that one they could probably reduce the number of issues folks run into setting it up.

There is no mailchimp integration built into Email Before Download (EBD).

There are hundreds of mailchimp-related plugins though. Some of them might work with EBD or with its plugins (like Contact Form 7). For example, maybe something like this one might work for what you need – https://wordpress.org/plugins/gwebpro-contact-form-7-mailchimp-extension/

Or, you could use something other than EBD. The paid version of https://wordpress.org/plugins/double-opt-in-for-download/ claims to have mailchimp integration of some type and it does a form with a file download, similar to EBD.

If you have programming skills, it probably wouldn’t be that difficult to modify the EBD code to add subscribers to a mailchimp list. If you’ve never used the mailchimp API, then I suggest you use the old version 1.3 php api, which is going to be more straightforward and far less buggy than the latest one. If you’re doing nothing more than adding email addresses & a bit of related info to a single list (not a group or segment), then it won’t be too difficult. One minor item to watch out for — you can’t add an address that already existed & then unsubscribed (you need to first delete it, then readd it, or you need to resubscribe it rather than readd it). I can’t recall if the API has a simple way to deal with that or not.

One other point — you don’t really know if the email address is valid or not at the time the user downloads the file from your site (assuming you have EBD set to “inline” or “both”). So, you’ll probably get some bad addresses entered into your list from people who put in fake email addresses in order to get the download file. They’ll bounce & mailchimp will clean them, but it’s always best to prevent that if you can (since too many bounces is bad for your list in their eyes). Of course, you would get fewer bad/fake email addresses if you set EBD to “email” since people couldn’t get the file unless they put in a valid email address.