eStore – "Internet Explorer cannot download download.php"

[mkellam]

When customers try to download a pdf file, some IE users receive the error:

“Internet Explorer cannot download download.php from [www.oursite.com]. Internet Explorer was not able to open this Internet site. The requested site is either unavailable or cannot be found.”

It appears that the computer is attempting to download the download php script file rather than the pdf.

This issue is causing big problems for us.

With our old download system, we encountered this problem and they had an option for “Force IE to download as attachment” Is there something like this I can do in WP eStore?

Thank you very much!

Michael

[wzp]

Try this…

https://support.tipsandtricks-hq.com/forums/topic/problem-downloading-zip-file-from-internet-explorer

[admin]

Are you using a caching plugin?

If not then have you manually modified your .htaccess file in the root folder to add gzip option for your content?

[mkellam]

Yes, I am using a caching plugin – W3 Total Cache

I have not manually modified my .htaccess file in the root folder to add gzip option for my content. Should I?

Following a trail of posts from wzp, I added the following to my htaccess:

<br />

<FilesMatch ".(?i:pdf)$"><br />

ForceType application/octet-stream<br />

Header set Content-Disposition attachment<br />

</FilesMatch><br />

Should that work? The reason I was unsure about the other solutions is that other commenters on those posts seemed to say the various solutions in other posts didn’t work in all scenarios, but I don’t have enough computers to test all of the current versions of every browser. If the code above does what I think it does, it seems like the most likely to work. We NEVER need readers to open pdf files in a browser directly from our site.

Also, sorry for the OT, but is there a way to receive notifications of new comments to forum posts? I didn’t realize there were responses.

Thanks!

Michael

[wzp]

To receive notifications on your posts; click on your user name, after the word “Welcome” at the top of this page. Then click on “manage your favorites” link.

You most likely enabled gzip compression in your W3 Total cache plugin which is creating this issue. Uncheck the gzip compression option from the browser cache settings of that plugin. More details on this topic here:

https://support.tipsandtricks-hq.com/forums/topic/using-the-plugins-with-w3-total-cache-plugin

[mkellam]

Thanks, WZP! I did have the GZip compression on but it’s off now. Does that mean it’s not likely I need to leave the htaccess change I applied above? Can I undo that?

Thanks again!

Michael

[wzp]

Just undo the htaccess mods you made.

[Author]

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