dtynan

Or, more precisely, you right-click on each one and then choose to save it locally.

I think you download the individual files from the (very slow to respond) source repository at https://plugins.trac.www.ads-software.com/browser/email-before-download?order=name#trunk

I don’t see any way to download all the files in a zip, so you’ll have to like click on each one I guess….

Have you modified the php code itself at all?

Change the name to xdownload.txt so I can access it and look at it & make sure it looks ok. Normally, going to download.php like we were trying to do should work and it just gives you an empty web page … or, at least that’s the way it used to work. Maybe that got changed in the most recent version & that’s what you’re using. Or, maybe yours is corrupted somehow. If you make it a .txt then I can look at the code & see if that tells us anything…

this won’t fix anything, but it may give us some more info to go on — make a copy of download.php under a new name (in the same directory). For example, copy download.php to blah.php and update this item so I can try and access it. I’m curious if we can get to it under a different name or if download.php is outputting something that’s causing the failure.

Well it could be webserver configuration. Or it could be leftover htaccess files that don’t get removed when the plugins are disabled. Or maybe directory or file permissions. Or if you’ve modified download.php in the EBD plugin directory then perhaps it’s broken and never runs. I can’t really debug it any further with the state that you’re in — there’s nothing for me to look at that I can actually get to.

You could install a new wordpress instance in another directory somewhere (if your hosting provider allows you to do that), then installed CF7, EBD, and Download Monitor and try it there & see if it works. That would get you a clean instance without any leftover security stuff or whatever… A bit of work, but not more than an hour or so probably….

See this thread that includes an update from the author of the plugin:
https://www.ads-software.com/support/topic/plugin-no-longer-supported-14/

It’s been over 3 months since that comment, so I’m not sure if the plugin is going to return or not. Hopefully the author is just busy and will get back to it soon…

The problem is that your set up is blocking access to the download.php file in the Email Before Download plugin directory.

So, if I try to get to this URL, I get a 403 Forbidden:
https://jaguaraudiodesign.com/blog/wp-content/plugins/email-before-download/download.php

That has to be fixed or no one will be able to get to your download files. Strangely, the URL to checkcurl.php works:
https://jaguaraudiodesign.com/blog/wp-content/plugins/email-before-download/checkcurl.php

That’s pretty unusual to have one php program blocked and another working like that when both are in the same directory. Hmmm. My guess is that you have the Wordfence plugin set to block access to the WP-Content directory … or you have the Wordfence Firewall turned on … or some combination of the two. The Firewall being on might explain why checkcurl.php is accessible but the other stuff isn’t. Anyway, regardless, you have to let the outside world get to the download.php script in the EBD plugin directory or things won’t work.

Note this could also be a permissions problem on the files themselves. The download link that is being generated is actually incorrect because it is going to https://jaguaraudiodesign.com/blog/wp-content/plugins/email-before-download/?somerandomcharacters
when it should be going to:
https://jaguaraudiodesign.com/blog/wp-content/plugins/email-before-download/download.php/?somerandomcharacters

That’s weird too. Not sure what would cause that, but could be file/directory permissions or could be the Wordfence plugin. Or, all this could also be caused by certain Apache configurations.

Just a side note, when you are to “both” or to “email” in the EBD settings, then EBD will actually send 2 emails out. One email is supposed to go to you (the WordPress administrator) to let you know someone filled in the download form. I call that email the “notification email”. The other email goes to the email address that the website visitor typed into the form (ie the website visitor’s email address). Right now, you are sending both emails to the website visitor’s email address. This is because you changed the TO: value in the Contact Form 7 field. It won’t hurt anything to leave it like you have it, but it’s not the normal way … normally the email configured from that screen (the “notification email”) is just to let you know something happened (that’s why it doesn’t have a link to the download file).

Ok, sorry about that red herring about the quotes. I saw those curly quotes and assumed that was probably the problem without even checking anything else…now, I’ve actually tried out your page.

First problem is that the EBD plugin files are not accessible from the Internet. Note that most WordPress plugins do not require people out on the Net to directly access the plugin files down in the wp-content/plugin directory. That’s because they normally run entirely “within” WordPress. EBD is different because the link for people to download the downloadable file is a link into the EBD plugin directory (to download.php). In your case, trying to access any PHP file in the EBD plugin directory returns a 404 Not Found — that’s the case for download.php, for checkcurl.php, etc. Accessing non-php files, like readme.txt, gives a 403 Permission Denied. That makes it pretty clear that you have some sort of security plugin (WordPress or webserver) or have your webserver configured to do this (and directory permissions may be at play as well) or some combination of that. This was probably done to “harden wordpress” .. it probably does make things a bit more secure, but just a bit. If you want to use EBD, you’ll have to fix it to (at least) allow access to download.php from the net. Here are some example URLs that don’t work, so you can see what I mean:

these give 404 Not Found
https://www.cmdacoachingdirect.com/wp-content/plugins/email-before-download/download.php
https://www.cmdacoachingdirect.com/wp-content/plugins/email-before-download/checkcurl.php

this gives a 403 Permission Denied:
https://www.cmdacoachingdirect.com/wp-content/plugins/email-before-download/readme.txt

Now, once that is fixed things just might start working. Or, there might still be issues. Right now, if I try to access the 25-Questions-eBook.pdf directly, I get a 403 Permission Denied. That will be a problem IF you have Hide/Mask set to NO. With Hide/Mask set to Yes it might work (or might not, we’ll have to see).

Oh, one thing I forgot to mention. I noticed that the message that appeared on the form after I submitted it said that the link to the download would expire in 1 hour. That makes me think you have Link Expiration turned on. Very few people use that … there -might- be bugs with that and certain other settings (like Hide/Mask). I can’t remember exactly. I suggest before you do anything, you first turn link expiration off, test again, then if still same problem track down the issues I talked about above. Once you get everything working, THEN turn on link expiration & retest.

Did you cut’n’paste your shortcode from your wordpress page into the post above? If so, the problem appears to be the double-quotes around your ID numbers in your shortcode. Those are not normal double-quotes. They look like they may be MS-Word “smart quotes”. Notice how they curve and look different than the quotes I just put in this comment. I suggest you edit your wordpress page & make sure you are in the text-editor view rather than the HTML view and then delete the quotes and replace them with quotes you type in there yourself.

rimell, please open a new support item for the problem you’re encountering (if it is still an issue). In that new item, include a link to your page (I’ll have to see it to fix it probably) and the shortcode that you are using. Also, please set it to “Both” in the EBD settings.

Oh, sorry, I misread what you said — I thought you meant you copied an example off that page and it wasn’t working on your site. Sorry for the confusion.

As far as those examples, I’m not really sure what’s wrong with any of those. I haven’t looked at them very closely. I’m not the plugin author and I don’t work for M&S Consulting .. I’m just a user of the plugin and a software developer and there were a lot of people on the support forum needing help so I just chip in periodically and answer questions.

Impossible to say. Open a new support item and put in a link to your page and the shortcode you are using if you want me to look at it.

No, you’d have to modify the plugin and change/add some php to do that.

If you are set up to do a single-file download in your form, then you can fill in section 9.1 of the EBD Settings if you want to do a custom message in the email rather than the default message. In that section, you can use the [file_name] tag.

If you are set up to do multiple-file download (as in your are using the <ebd/> or <ebd_left /> tags in order to get radio buttons or checkboxes), then you can fill in section 9.2 of the EBD Settings if you want to do a custom message in the email rather than the default message. In that section, you can use the [file_urls] tag, which will list all the file names selected by the user and make them links that he can click on to download.

Note that both of those sections are for the email that gets sent to the user. They don’t affect the display of the links on the webpage itself (if you selected “both” or “inline”).

For some reason your form is doing a normal POST when you click the Submit button. That means the response from the server is the entire page all over again. Instead, it should be doing an AJAX POST and the server should be sending back just a little bit of JSON rather than the entire page. So, that is the problem .. or a symptom of the problem….

I’m not certain what could be causing that. My best guess is the captcha. I would start with that. Turn that off and retest the page and see if it starts working. If that’s not it, then it’s probably some plugin interfering. I took a quick look through the page and didn’t see anything obvious, but if you have a plugin that could interfere with form submission or with AJAX then that is probably the culprit.