Magento

Hello,

after some searching I found that digital download products will be the correct wording for my question. I found on the roadmap that this is an feature your are planning for a release until the end of the year. But I didn’t any specifications about it.

Whats my need?
- Uploading a file as product or a link on a file
- An article is an access to this file for limited time (3-6-12 months) or a limited number of accesss to the file (10-20-50-100 times)
- After buying this article the customer gets a personal link to the original file.

Is this covered by your roadmap`?

For a better understanding. My context is the distribution of learning objects for a learning management software. The customer buys the limited access to the file that is used as access in the Learning Management system.

Since those are pretty basic features that most (if not all) digital download services for in eCommerce packages offer then I’d be pretty confidant that they would be included in the Magento teams offering. I’m hoping as well that features such as the ability to run a script to generate a key or send an e-mail after a digital download product is purchased, or the ability to have multiple files attached to a product, will also be included in their specs. But I guess only time will tell on those features.

- Jonathan

Ralf Hilgenstock - 29 September 2008 04:38 AM

My context is the distribution of learning objects for a learning management software. The customer buys the limited access to the file that is used as access in the Learning Management system.

Hi Ralf,

You mention that you are using a Learning Management System, which one are you using?

Are you looking to enable some kind of single sign on solution between Magento and your LMS?

Do you provide any audio or video in your LMS that you would want to protect?

Today I use aMember (http://amember.com) and it works well for protecting files, single signon, etc. Might want to take a look to see if that meets your short term needs.

Ralf Hilgenstock - 29 September 2008 04:38 AM

After buying this article the customer gets a personal link to the original file.

Instead of providing personal links to files, aMember uses a .htaccess approach to protect the directories the files are contained in. This allows you to have a static link for files.

Static links and digest based protection is important to me as I protect media files (mp3, mp4) that are presented on static pages and via podcast. Since Itunes supports digest authentication for protected directories I can deliver a full album or course of materials via a podcast delivery mechanism (ie. rss file) where the user is prompted for a user id and password within ITunes when they attempt to download the content.

I’d like to throw that into the hat for consideration when implementing downloadable products into Magento.