Installing e-books for sale

[David M. Graham]

Daniel,

FDMS is a paid addon - so, the first step is to acquire it.  Once you have it is a simple matter of uploading the files to the correct location then running the installer.  After that, some configuration and setup is required.  That process is roughly similar to setting up your products and categories.

Whether your e-Books require authentication is dependent upon the format in which they are distributed.

If you have to enter a password or user id / password combination to read the material in the e-Book then you will need to manage the authentication data.  If not, you won't.

David

[fierydomain]

David,

Given your guidance on the "download controller" and it's flaws, I would rather go with your method, FDMS.  I'm not sure if I would need to provide authentication data.  How do I set up FDMS, and determine if I need to provide authentication data?

Daniel

[David M. Graham]

Daniel,

As with many other questions about CRE Loaded - that one is a bit loaded. 

It depends on what your requirements for e-Book management are.   If you have no need to manage authentication for the e-Book you can use either the download controller or Chain Reaction's File Distribution Management System to attach the e-Book file to a product and make it available for download.

The "Download Controller" has some interesting flaws.  Aside from being a pain to modify because of editing flaws in the attribute system in some versions of CRE Loaded, it has only one order status selection for triggering downloads.  Any order status with an index higher than the selected order status authorizes the file for download.  So if you need to add new order statuses at a later time, your store becomes vulnerable to unauthorized downloads of e-Books.  Still, it has the pluses of being cheap and available in most CRE Loaded releases.  We cover this process in our FAQ for adding a downloadable product to CRE Loaded.

FDMS is a bit more involved to setup, but offers additional pages which can be used to offer information about the file and can be setup to trigger downloads on multiple, specific order statuses.  This is the method I use, and I still find it easier than the Download Controller to work with .

If you need to provide authentication data, things get a bit more involved.  You must either do so manually after each purchase, or add modifications such as our Product Keys for CRE Loaded addon.

While this has the disadvantage of requiring a set of CSV files to be available and writable by the web server, it is at present the only commercially available addon for product authentication on any osCommerce based platform..

David

[fierydomain]

How do I install e-books for sale in my cart?