[LANSRAD]

Thanks for the link.

I’d found that one and tried it before posting here, but it made no difference.

FWIW if I only put the Toolset shortcode there it does return the correct value.

[LANSRAD]

Thanks for the link!

[LANSRAD]

Thanks for the help and the ideas!

[LANSRAD]

Thanks for the suggestion.

I looked at it and while I think it would be easy to setup on something like a bronze, silver, gold membership level set of products, how would that work in our case?

We have about 50-60 products (plus some combos) and each of these gets a paid update every year or so.

It seems that we’d have to create multiple levels in the membership plugin for each of the products we have (plus setting them up in the eStore plugin).

That is a lot to setup and maintain unless I am missing something here.

[LANSRAD]

Thanks – I’ll look into this.

We don’t want to do anything to impede possible sales (such as requiring them to create a customer account to buy – some people have issues with sites like that), but I think we could use this plugin in conjunction with the membership plugin to get what we want.

We would let them know that the only way they can get new links is to have an account (on one of the public pages) and then have the page that this plugin works with be one of the pages that is only visible after they have created an account and logged in.

[LANSRAD]

I’ve been a software developer 35+ years. The crazy ship has already sailed from the port<g>.

The license manager is interesting, but I don’t think it would work for us.

Our SetupBuilder installers are protected and require a unique (per customer) serial number to install. These are generated by the program and currently we import the valid numbers into a desktop application. Then when we issue a new license we enter the data and the program mails out the download links, the installer password and the customer SN for that product.

After giving this a lot more thought, one concern that we have is that having a fully automated system where the user pays with PayPal, and we send both the links and SN automatically is that the PayPal checkout does not do much in the way of validation.

When we get an order, we look to see if it is a “free” e-mail account (such as Yahoo). Then we look at the address and phone number (or lack of them). We look at the name of the buyer as well as check out the domain website if it is not a free e-mail address.

You would be surprised at how often orders come to us that are from a stolen credit card or a hijacked PayPal account.

Since our products are ultimately source products (meaning that once they are installed they COULD be copied and redistributed), we have to take extra precautions.

Otherwise (and we HAVE had this happen) a hacker “buys” one of our products, then puts the installer, the password and a valid registration code on a pirate site. This can literally cost us tens of thousands of dollars a year for even one hijacked product!

Since we never use a public “download” URL posted on our website, I am starting to think that what may be our best course of action is a “hybrid” system.

We could use WP eStore to deliver the download URL for the file to the buyer as soon as the order is placed.

Then we would still validate the order offline and send the e-mail with the registration data from the desktop app. Our customers are used to the slight delay, so that would not be a problem for them.

Then the WP eStore shortcode could be used so they could retrieve their download links if they lose them.

Two other questions:

1) What would be the best way to setup a “my account” page where we could embed the shortcode to retrieve the links? We do have your membership plugin, but don’t want to over complicate things.

2) How does that shortcode work with regards to expired links? IOW, if we had a link set to expire after 10 downloads and the customer goes to their account page and requests new links be sent – they will just get a new link for the expired product and not the old ones too. I think that is how it works, but just want to be sure.

Thanks!

[LANSRAD]

Thanks for the feedback.

We already have an established method of handling upgrades and when buyers get a free upgrade to the next version (basically for one year).

The actual filenames are different, so that is not a real problem either (and our products are installed by a code signed installer created by SetupBuilder).

We do have end of life cycles on our products.

Having a code dependency (you must have V1 to install V2) is not practical as the files installed by SetupBuilder are ultimately source files and there is no way to do that.

My question about linking it here was simply to restrict the purchase of an upgrade to someone who had already bought the full version, but it appears that will not be possible.

Currently we handle this by NOT automating delivery of upgrades – they have to be checked manually and we were hoping to avoid this.

I am still interested in an answer about whether or not the self-service shortcode to resend links would still send out links for deleted products that no longer existed (I could test this, but it would be nice just to know the answer).

Thanks!

[LANSRAD]

Typically the download links are posted on a hacker board. So when someone replies that the links don’t work anymore if there is a way the hacker with the original address could refresh his/her own links they could do that and simply repost the new links.

If they have to come back to us and ask for a resend of the e-mail, then we get a chance to notice suspicious behavior (like too many downloads in too short of a reasonable time) and question them about it (or not send the new links).

That is why we would opt to use a more sophisticated admin feature where we could select an order and resend the links for it.

Also I noticed that the shortcode that resends the new links sends them for all products.

In our case we will have customers that buy different versions (upgrades) to our products for years at a time (we have some that are 10+ years now). So an e-mail that resends 10 year old links mixed in with the latest ones is really confusing to the customer.

[LANSRAD]

Here is the solution!

Edit line 480 of the estore_cart.php file and wrap the line in conditional code like this:

if (!empty($item)) {

$item_total_shipping += $item * $item;

}

That way the line is only evaluated if there is an actual shipping amount set.

If you can get this into the next update of the plugin it would make this issue go away as far as I can see.

Charles

[LANSRAD]

This error occurs for me as well.

It ONLY happens if you have created a new product and do NOT enter ANY amount for the shipping charge.

If you enter 0.00 (or just 0) as the shipping charge, then everything works as it should.

However it is a PITA to have to open the shipping section and enter a zero amount for every digital product created.

I understand that a blank is not the same as a zero, but it seems like you could fix this in code or at least set it up so that when a new product is created that it defaults to a value of “0” (or whatever is specified in the settings).

Thanks!

[LANSRAD]

I forgot to mention that I think this would be a great enhancement for your plugin.

There are a lot of people out there who already have some sort of system that they have been using to sell digital products (usually desktop based).

Being able to import data from them (and it is fine for you to specify the format and fields you need) so that they can smoothly transition to a web based eStore is a big consideration.

In our case if we can not do that, then we would have to just not use the portion of your plugin that manages the downloads- which pretty much eliminates the reason we want to use it.

We could take the ToolSet Types plugins and create the functionality that we need (including the payment processing and e-mailing, but we would much rather be able to use your plugin for the job.

[LANSRAD]

The self service option would defeat the purpose of limiting the download count.

Hackers (or thieves) would simply hit the limit, reset the links and continue downloading.

Likewise having to manually generate an e-mail with new links is not very good as all of the formatting and extra data carried with the original e-mail would have to be re-created each time.

What is really needed is to be able to do this from the manage customers menu.

If we could select a customer, then a product from the list of what they had purchased, then either resend the original e-mail with new links, or better yet have a new e-mail with a message telling them the download count had been reset and that these were the new links, that would be perfect (and more of a real world solution IMHO).

Since you already have all the data at hand when we are looking at a selected order for a selected customer it would seem that the ability to reset the counter, call the link generator and e-mail a new message with a different template would not be a monumental task.

I think this would be a significant enhancement to a great product!

[LANSRAD]

The number of customers and average number of products per customer would make that very unwieldy and very error prone.

I was hoping for an import function that could take data in some format or at worst case a way to do it via the WordPress REST API.

[LANSRAD]

Ok I just found the “Download Limit Count” property and I see where that can help.

But how can you reset the download count for a specific product sale by a customer?

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