How to Create a Downloadable Product? 2024

Introduction

Downloadable product allow online shop owners to sell digital products such as video, audio, pdf files, ebooks, etc. Customers can download their purchased file right away when the payment is completed.

Product Settings

Downloadable product settings are almost the same with Simple product, there are few exceptions.

Because this is a downloadable product, there is no shipping option. According to that, there is no options page and ability to choose color and size (digital product has no physical existence)

Files

There are 3 options to set before any other action.

Product Files

There is a button to choose downloadable files to set customers’ view. Click it to be directed to a popup window which displays file name and the path of the file set.

Important Notice: Go to Configuration > Basic settings, you should point the file attachment path field to an existing directory inside your site root. If a directory outside the public root is specified, you need to enter by hand the full file path.

Download limit

To set the max number of copies which are allowed to download by a customer. Just enter a value to set the limitation

Download Expires(in days)

To set the expired date of product link which is active to download. If the length of days is 15 days, the link will be expired by the beginning of the 16th day. The rest options are similar to Simple Product.

Guide to create a downloadable product

The same with Simple Product, J2store development team has implemented a modern concept in building a product. Just need to create an article to create a product.

Please click Add New Article

There is no physical existence in a downloadable product, so customers can download according to the terms and condition of store owners. To create a downloadable product, please follow the below steps

Fill the product name that you want to create
Choose YES at the option “Treat as Product”
Product type: choose from the given list, select Downloadable
Click “Save and Continue” button.

A successful message will be shown as the above image when your product is created. Let’s add a description for your product.

Next, you will need to configure products.

General

At the simple product’s General tab, you can set up the product basic information such as SKU, Brand, tax profile, cart button’s caption, etc.

The next tab is Pricing.

Pricing

Price for your product can be set here. There are options to set up advanced price like discount.

Click button Set prices to set special/advanced prices. There is a popup window appearing to help you set the special prices.

Like you can see in the image, length of date for running special price might be set here, or you just simply leave it blank if the special price can be applied forever. Now, please fill in the value > click the blue button “Create” to get the list of special price below:

Images

You will see a screen like below when you choose Image tab.

Choose button Select an image to see a popup window, then pick an appropriate image for your product.

Your tab will look like below when finishing image selection

Files

Tab Options and Shipping are not available for downloadable products, however, it has Files tab. You will need to have a directory in your site or separate folder to put the downloadable products. From that folder, the product might be downloaded when customer completes the requirements to get the download.

Set up a folder with downloadable products

Step1: Let’s create on your site a folder to upload the files.

You can use either CPanel file manager of your hosting provider, or FTP client (such as Filezilla) to access the web root (public_html / www / httpdocs).

When you’re in the web root, let’s begin creating a folder and set its name as: myfiles

Step 2: Keep the folder our of outside access

Obviously, we don’t want outside people to access this folder by their browser and download the files which they need to pay for using that. Let’s use a .htaccess file.

In your computer, create a file htaccess.txt and open it with a text editor, then add these lines to that file

order deny, allow

deny from all

Then save the file. Next, upload it to the folder you just created in the web root.

Notice: Remember to rename the file .htaccess.

Now all the files are prevented from outside.

Step 3: Point J2store to use the file in the folder you just created.

Go to Joomla admin > J2store Dashboard > Set up > Configuration > Basic settings

From the File attachment path field, fill the folder name containing your files.

Save the configuration. You already created successfully a folder to upload downloadable products, as well as set up the protection mechanism and configure the folder in the configuration page.

Next step is configuring your Files tab in the downloadable product creation

Click the button Set files to get a popup window, choose the file which is going to be download

Select the file > click button Create to get a list of products below. Just add as many files as you want to the folder. All the files which associated with product will be ready to download when a customer make a payment successfully.

Please set the limitation of download (for unlimited, set it as 0), download expire date:

How to create customers’ Download Area:

Access Menu > Menus > your menu
Click New and enter the name
Click Select against Menu Item Type to see a popup
Choose J2Store > My Profile
Then Save.

Let customers know that they need to visit this menu to download the files after purchasing

After customer finish payment and when status shows “confirmed”, click My profile, their order will be shown like this:

When they click Downloads tab, the download link will be shown:

Filters

Helping you search product easier. For example, if you want to find music files, just typing “music”, the search will only show music files.

Relations

At this tab, you can add a higher-value product as well as product relating to the one customer is viewing and recommend it to them to buy it, along with the additional features and advantages.