I’m in the process of building the grounds for an online guitar lesson and guitar community site. After many months looking for the appropriate e-commerce solution and failing in finding anything remotely useable - I finally found Magento. What a breeze of fresh air! I like the strict separation of core engine and looks, the powerfull attribut system, the superb instant search and many things more. It was quite a challenge to make it install on a server, but fortunately I have the help of a computer engineer.
Anyway. The one thing lacking right now is support for downloadable items(products). Fortunately, it is on the road map. But recently we had some concern that the feature would not make into the release. Of course downloadable items are the only products I am going to sell - namley video lessons and courses. So inspite of all the benefits, Magento would be of little use to me, if it came without the downloadable item feature.
That said, I would like to take the opportunity and discuss the way I would like this feature to be implemented for your consideration.
The customer needs a way of getting a glimpse of what the product is going to be like. Since in my case, this is going to be videos, a flash video preview option for each product is a necessity, also I would like to offer mp3-preview of the lesson in question - plus a written description of course. So in the admin panel of the ‘add product’ dialogue need to be options to add this kind of preview files. Ideally this kind of options could be easily set up by the admin himself, to taylor his webshop to his needs. To make things even more difficult, I want this features for two languages - English and German. So the preview movies are not the same for the English and German shops, nor are the descriptions of course.
These are the main things I can think of right now. There are other things like keywords and optional addition of a second preview movie, but first things first.
So with this post I mainly wanted to raise the topic of ‘downloadable products’ to the attention of the Magento people. Any kind of reassuring words that this feature will make it into the release would be much appreciated.
Other users that find this feature important, please give your statement in this thread.
Thank you very much for your hard work, Magento - and thanks for reading this long posting.
I’d love to tell you that the team is planning on releasing this in the release candidate, as it makes sense to release the rest of the features on the roadmap in the release candidate so they all the bugs get ironed out by the final stable release, but who’s to say for sure at this point.
I do know you and I, among many others, are looking forward to the downloadable products for sure. I’ve got a number of projects lined up that would benefit from the feature set related to “intangibles.”
Thanks Scott for your thoughts in this thread.
So, I see there’s another thread regarding Downloadable Products, which confirms the interest of the user base in this feature.
Still hoping someone from Magento shares some info with us.
The customer needs a way of getting a glimpse of what the product is going to be like. Since in my case, this is going to be videos, a flash video preview option for each product is a necessity, also I would like to offer mp3-preview of the lesson in question - plus a written description of course. So in the admin panel of the ‘add product’ dialogue need to be options to add this kind of preview files
A very nice solution would be if there is a general ‘binary attribute type’. Hence, an admin can add add any file (PDF, mp3, video files or whatever..) to a product. Imagine a PDF with technical details of a product.
I am also really interested in downloadable products! Hope to see them in the release candidate!
Thanks for everyone’s input. We are following this thread and will take your comments into consideration. As you are well aware, anything can be done with custom development
I work for a musician and am looking to build an ecommerce site where he can sell his physical CDs and also sell mp3 downloads. I am very anxious to see this feature added soon.
My store will be selling virtual game items. One thing that will be critical is to be able to set a “timelimit” for the availability of an item. And make that time limit as an attribute at the item level. Also, a way for customers to see their virtual item inventory, and expiration dates for each item. And to set that an item never expires.
We sell musicals to schools and theatre groups as books and cds. We would love to use magento for our new downloads site - PDFs and MP3s so PLEASE include this feature!
Also a nicely done media/samples area would be great - we have sample PDFs, MP3s and some musicals have sample videos too.
I have a client looking to sell packs of his digital photos in groups (multiple files to upload, group, and download, probably as a zip) priced by size and file type (small, medium, large, original, and in jpeg or raw file for original sizes).
He also wants the ability to offer the purchase of “credits” and price each photo pack in dollars and credits (for those that have them) with an obvious discount on the cost of credits vs. just buying photo packs with actual money. He also mentioned offering extended licensing which would drive up the cost more based on the level of license chosen. Each user would need to agree to the chosen licensing terms before downloading.
He’s also interested in the option of downloads and prints by mail, with a discount if both are purchased at once. He asked about the possibility of limiting the downloads to 24 hours, unless they purchase the prints (in which case download limit is indefinite).
So this would be ideal functionality for me at the moment.
I need this feature to offer audio CD’s for download, I may study the PayPal API to figure out how to do it myself, although I’m not sure how hard it will be.
I have a client looking to sell packs of his digital photos in groups (multiple files to upload, group, and download, probably as a zip) priced by size and file type (small, medium, large, original, and in jpeg or raw file for original sizes).
He also wants the ability to offer the purchase of “credits” and price each photo pack in dollars and credits (for those that have them) with an obvious discount on the cost of credits vs. just buying photo packs with actual money. He also mentioned offering extended licensing which would drive up the cost more based on the level of license chosen. Each user would need to agree to the chosen licensing terms before downloading.
He’s also interested in the option of downloads and prints by mail, with a discount if both are purchased at once. He asked about the possibility of limiting the downloads to 24 hours, unless they purchase the prints (in which case download limit is indefinite).
So this would be ideal functionality for me at the moment.
First post to the forum here…
I work in a media department at a large camp/conference center. Currently we are in dire need of moving to selling our mp3s via online store download. What Scott listed in his “wish list” is right along the lines of what we’d need. With digital download capability, hands down Magento would be our choice. An aspect I love is that you can add a customer and order all in one fell swoop-- something I’ve been looking for in an ecommerce solution.
So I guess that’s my vote for digital download. If not, I guess it’s CubeCart for us.
After thinking about this I do not think it would be a difficult module to write integrated with paypal IPN. The only thing that scared me is how easy it is to integrate into the magento code base.
At a minimum
You need a table for users linked to -> download details linked to -> actual files
I do not need anything as clever as mp3 selling, but simply a means to add a descriptive PDF file or two to products. I’m a bit surprised this hasnt been added as yet by Magento, as i would think that it would be a very important feature for quite a few webshops.
Please PM me, if anyone comes up with any ways to hack this at the moment, but to be honest I would rather wait until Magento integrate this feature to save any potential issues.
