Downloadable Products

Questions and Answers

How do you build an "Add to Cart" link?

When creating your “add to cart” links, you must call the category and code. ie. http://yourdomain.foxycart.com/cart?code=my_downloadable&category=downloadables

Is there a downloads page that needs to be styled?

No. The download links are added to the receipt page and to your receipt emails. Just make sure you style those and you'll be fine.

How they work: Admin

  • You can create downloadable products in the admin. Downloadable products must have a category assigned (to give greater flexibility with tax, handling, emails, etc.).
  • Downloads must have a unique “code”.
  • Unlike other products, downloadable products must have a price set in the admin. (This prevents potential price “spoofing”.)
  • When creating your “add to cart” links, you must call the category and code. ie. http://yourdomain.foxycart.com/cart?code=my_downloadable&category=downloadables
    • You could conceivably use the default category for downloadables, but it's not recommended, as it's quite easy to forget. A non-downloadable product in a downloadable category will work, but it won't function as expected (particularly with regard to shipping).
  • You can set the maximum number of downloads allowed per product (per order), or expiration limits on downloadable links.

How they work: Customers

  • Customers add them to cart and purchase them as normally.
  • Customers are then presented with links to download their products on the receipt page.
  • Additionally, links to download are present in any receipt emails you may send out. It is included where the ^^receipt^^ placeholder is set in your receipt email templates. (It's in the default templates, if you're worried.)

Limitations

  • 100MB limit on uploads in the admin.
  • No upload status indicator. We know it's annoying, and it's on our list of things to improve.
  • No ability to monitor whether (or how many times) products have been downloaded.

Other Possibilities

You could conceivably use the FoxyCart XML datafeed to build your own download management piece. If you have many, many downloadable products, or very large files, this could be an option worth exploring.

 
docs/downloads.txt · Last modified: 2007/12/11 02:21 by foxybrett
 
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