Thank you for your detailed reply.
DrByte:
Well, it can only be one of two things:
a) you, or someone, changed something in your store settings and/or PHP files
b) your hosting company changed their server configuration.
In the case of (a) I suspect you're going to say "you" didn't change anything. So, let's assume that's correct. What about anyone else? Someone else who has access to your site/server? Or your hosting company? Or a hacker?
It is possible "I" changed something unintentionally. One thing I have done recently is update my product catalog although I've done that several times before without problem. I use Easy Populate to load a CSV file I get from my supplier. It always appears to update existing products and add new ones but I guess there could be more going on behind the scenes.
No one else is supposed to have access to my site. Although it's possible I could be the victim of a hacker, it seems a hacker would not target messing with a download I give away for free. More likely that my hosting company may have changed something.
DrByte:
Compare everything on your server against a good known working backup, and resolve any differences you find. Take it a step further and compare your database backup against a fresh copy of your database, looking for any changes to configuration settings, product/attribute details, etc (naturally new customers/orders are to be expected). Prove to yourself that nothing rogue is going on and prove that the claim of "nobody has changed anything" is accurate.
I did try to install this PHP debug script (http://www.zen-cart.com/index.php?main_page=product_contrib_info&products_id=860) but never found any output in ./cache as documentation said. I don't know if that's because there are no errors or because I missed some step.
DrByte:
In the case of (b) you'll have to work with your hosting company to sort that out. It's not uncommon for them to deny changes, largely because that's their safest first answer. But it's often also not completely true, as many hosting companies have many employees doing things others don't know about. Report your symptoms including start date and how long things worked fine without problems. Maybe you'll end up talking with someone who will take you seriously and check logs etc for verification.
Download problems can often be attributed to server configuration changes, compression alterations, PHP upgrades, MIME changes, and a host of other issues managed on the server side.
Based upon past experience, it would likely be far easier to change hosting. :( This is why I've always preferred to run my own server but I don't do enough business to justify the expense of either co-hosting or getting business class bandwidth speeds to my home.
DrByte:
And IE8 is awful on so many fronts that it's very hard to tell whether it's just a browser issue. Granted, you have suggested maybe firefox is doing the same for you.
Yes, but unfortunately it's so popular that having a web site that doesn't work with it is not good for business.
DrByte:
That's almost certainly not going to make any difference in download performance, and will result in losing your search-engine ranking for that product since it will no longer exist under the same URL as it's been indexed for already. No point removing it unless you're absolutely certain that it's necessary, and I see nothing indicating such need.
Thanks for that advice. Instead of this, I actually created a "new" downloadable product for the same file to test. And like you thought, this did not make any difference.
Thank you for your time. I guess I was just hoping that there might be some easy fix for this symptom. If my download never worked, then I'd suspect my configuration or web host. But since downloads work with some browsers but not others, then I suspect my Zencart config is correct.
Cheers,
Drew
