Where Can My Users Download Virtual Files?

[TheMayhem]

So I am rather new to Zen Cart. I have setup zen cart and all of my products are virtual items. I went through the tutorials and added 3 different option names, then aded 3 different attributes, and assigned the files to the attributes. The download manager shows all files were correct and I thought I was done and good on setting up Zen Cart.

Today I had my first sales afterwards, the users successfully paid but unfortunately they cannot find anywhere to download the product. I ended up creating a coupon to allow me to purchase one of the items, and to my surprise there is no area to download the product. I am confused where I might of went wrong or is there a glitch related to downloading product attributes? Where should my users normally be able to see downloadable virtual items in their account manager?

[DrByte]

Downloads should not be marked as "virtual" products. Downloads are treated specially as downloads by virtue of having a download file associated with them as an attribute, thus triggering the required handling. If configured as virtual, that download attribute doesn't trigger.

See: https://www.zen-cart.com/tutorials/index.php?article=71

[TheMayhem]

Okay you were right I had a few things setup incorrectly.

Now I'm in an unusual problem, I had 3 customer orders for a particular item that is required for download only. However, the files won't show under their customer history to be able to download this file. How can I update it so that they can download it as well?

[DrByte]

You'll need to either email the file to them manually, or create new orders for them so they can login and download them.

[TheMayhem]

You'll need to either email the file to them manually, or create new orders for them so they can login and download them.

I've run into one more problem related to this. When people who've purchased an order go to download the .zip file: They receive a HTTP 400 Bad Request Error I checked the admin cp and the file is definately showing as being read and correct under the Download Manager and the file is on ftp, so I don't know why it won't let them download a .zip file and is giving them a 400 error. Any ideas???

[DrByte]

I don't see that reported very often.
http://www.checkupdown.com/status/E400.html

[DrByte]

I've run into one more problem related to this. When people who've purchased an order go to download the .zip file: They receive a HTTP 400 Bad Request Error I checked the admin cp and the file is definately showing as being read and correct under the Download Manager and the file is on ftp, so I don't know why it won't let them download a .zip file and is giving them a 400 error. Any ideas???

Maybe your hosting server can't handle the default method by which Zen Cart serves downloadable files.
By default Zen Cart uses the more secure method of "Download by Redirect", in which it creates a temporary copy of the download file and points your customer to that copy for direct download. If your server can't handle that reliably, then maybe you'll have to turn off the Download By Redirect option and simply serve files directly from their original location in the /download/ folder. That's much less "secure", since customers could share the download link with their friends and let them grab as many copies of the file as they want.

But, it would be worth testing it even temporarily to see if the download works when redirect is disabled.

Another option is to download by streaming, but that has other performance issues depending on your server's capabilities, and can sometimes cause other errors if your server can't handle it. That would be another thing to test, but not the recommended fix.

There's lotsa info available about using downloadable files: simply use the "search" in the FAQs section and search for "download"