DIgital Downloads – Partial downloads

Hi there,

Regardless of version of woocommerce, additional plugins, themes and or end file (mp4, pdf or mp3) end users are only getting a partial download – i.e 364kb of 650mb file

With the forced method, the file is divided into smaller pieces and delivered to the browser without redirecting the user to the actual file.

WooCommerce uses PHP to process the file, therefore larger files can cause problems with delivery, resulting in hitting the ‘max execution time’ of the server. If user’s have download interruptions your server probably needs more hardware resources.

You can also try and up the max execution time but that won’t help much if your server lacks the hardware power to begin with.

Kind regards,

Large download files are best served from external storage like a Amazon S3 bucket.

@conschneider thanks for the reply.

Yes agree and understand this, but nothing has changed in terms of hardware or even settings only updates from plugins and framework.

Max execution time is set to 300 which is ample.

@lukefiretoss – yes or a DropBox or OneDrive…the concept is no different.

This issue here is purely with Woocommerce, irrelevant where the end file is stored?

Hi again,

This issue here is purely with Woocommerce, irrelevant where the end file is stored?

Maybe. You could try another WordPress plugin that uses the same download method to try and serve the download to see if that really is the case. But most times any problem is the result of the setup architecture.

I think the best way to find out is to start debugging. Get the server access logs and analyse the file stream and file access along with the http error codes. Also get all server error and php error logs. This is the only way you can actually know what is going on.

Kind regards,

@conschneider So….as mentioned I’ve tried with a vanilla platform localhost, straight out of the box, no custom changes – vanilla, using a only the latest default theme and also woocommerce = same problem.

I’ve even changed the source file to a different format type, mp4 to mp3, mp3 to pdf, pdf to jpg but still get the same problem, changed the source location too – only a partial download of the file.

I have however got a positive result by changing source location to within WordPress…I really dont want this as a workaround though as large files (600mb – in my case) should be leveraged using cloud storage solutions.

I’m struggling to find a similar download plugin which uses the Force Downloads (hidden URL method) – end users receive/use this example link:

https://template.local/?download_file=4354&order=wc_order_RpCkUlUwItjSR&email=roger%40trans4.co.uk&key=9533651b-1acd-46de-803a-4ae11d93a5e9

If the product is within WordPress download completes – fully, if outside of WordPress then only a partiual download is completed (340 – 380kb…which varies depending on type and size of original file…the source file being 4mb or 600mb).

Grateful for any input as always – thank you ?? .