eStore – customer receives confirmation email, but download links are broken

[iguanawebco]

Hoping this is user error on my part but I can’t figure it out.

I have a digital download product for which I would like the customer to receive 3 download links. Couple of .docs and a .pdf. It’s set up as a Buy Now button that goes to PayPal (works correctly) and is routed back to the thank you page. All of that functionality works great.

The problem is that the links in the email that gets sent to the customer are broken: the link ends at /wp-cart-for-digital-products/. The rest of the link – /download.php?file=<encryption stuff> – is in the text but is not part of the link.

Here, a picture is worth some amount of words:

[https://dl.dropbox.com/u/13400699/eStore-broken-links.png]

Now, if you copy/paste the whole link into the browser, the file downloads. But the user isn’t supposed to have to do that, are they?

If I put only one link into the Digital Product URL field, it works fabulously. If I put two or more, separated by commas, then this issue occurs. If I put two more, separated by a comma and a space, same occurs.

Just updated WordPress and eStore to current and it still happens.

Any thoughts?

[Peter]

This could be the work of the email client you are using to view your email. What email client do you use?

Can you paste for us exactly what you put in the Digital Download URL field?

FYI – You could also zip all those files (.doc, .pdf etc) into one file and use that as your deliverable.

[wzp]

I believe it’s definitely a case of the email client trying to word wrap the link. The links are sent as plain text, and the email client is trying to turn the text links into something that is clickable; at the same time it is word wrapping them.

Solutions suggested in the past include a note in the email message, advising users to copy/paste the link, and also the use of the URL shortening feature.

https://support.tipsandtricks-hq.com/forums/topic/broken-download-links-in-email

https://support.tipsandtricks-hq.com/forums/topic/hypertext-of-encrypted-link-in-customer-email-gets-cut-off

[Arthur]

I have a popular product that has 8 parts for downloads. After recently installing Total Cache plugin, download links generated for 4 of 5 zip files stopped working and an error for file not found occurred. links worked prior to using total cache. PDF files still downloaded acceptably.

I’ve used the settings as indicated in the documentation, but never got the downloads to work until I diabled total cache plugin.

Also I updated estore plugin and changed to shortener and links work again.

The only other complaint I’m getting is that the click on the download link takes nearly a half a minute to bring up the save as dialog for a 25MB zip download. Smaller PDF files dialog comes up much quicker. I host the files on a different server than my site. Is there anything that can be done to get a faster dialog action?

I’ve warned my customers in the emails and download page.

[wzp]

Try excluding the download.php file from your caching software.

Also, if you have large downloadable files you should definitely try Amazon S3. This will remove any other server related issues/factors out of the way and make the download process smooth.

Checkout WP eStore’s amazon s3 integration feature:

http://www.tipsandtricks-hq.com/ecommerce/amazon-web-services-simple-storage-service-aws-s3-integration-1101

[iguanawebco]

<facepalm>

Yes, Mail.app for OS X 10.6.8 is definitely breaking the link w/word-wrap.

I should’ve checked in webmail before bothering you.

Thank you for the useful links above, wzp.

</facepalm>

[Author]

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