How to add downloadable products? Please help.

[shakir]

Sorry if this is a dumb question but I can't seem to work out how to add, for example, 'e-book's as downloadable products.
Im using the latest VM 2.0.10


If anyone has the time to steer me in the right direction it would be much appreciated.
Thanks!

[Milbo]

you can add any media and it is downloadable, but if you mean stuff for sale, then look here http://extensions.virtuemart.net/extensions-virtuemart-2/shipment-for-virtual-products-detail

[shakir]

Hi Milbo. Thanks. I was under the impression VM2 had downloadable for sale products built in like in vm1.

But I guess we need to purchase this as an add-on.

[Bill Bohn]

VM 2 has to have downloadable products built in. Downloadable products IMHO are the core of an online shop. Therefore downloadable products must be hidden away somwhere in the configuration or product details page.

I was able to find an option in the media for the product to select it's role as downloadable, bit that was for the product image.

Now, let's think about this for a minuet. I know we can add media via the media manaagement section, so based on the old way to do this, I would say that you have to add another media type then make it downloadable, but that still does not explain how to make it a for sale item.

milbo, I see you never replied to this person's second question, or rather reply. Does that mean you just figured that you would dump them off on a paid add-on, or is there really no way to add a downloadable "for sale" product in VM2? without  buying a paid add-on?

I thought it was going to get easiere to work with VM2, but I see I was sadly wrong. Please reply in a timely manner, even if it's just to defend yourself.
Thanks!

[Shibumi]

I too don't understand why this isn't an essential part of VirtueMart Core - and 35 Euros for the extension? Why was downloadable paid products removed from VirtueMart core anyways?

[Maxim Pishnyak]

Vmart is too cool solution to give this, not very popular feature just for free.

But yeah, comparing thes start-up 35 euros with earning hundreds or even thousands of $$$ when your eshop will start to work could be funny.

[PolishedGeek]

We have used DigiToll Downloads for VM2 and our clients are very happy with it. Costs more than 35 euros though - http://www.digitollsoftware.com/store/digitoll-downloads-detail

[psalamon]

Let me add my protest as well. I am a developer and my customer was on Joomla1.5 and VM 1.19
We had many problems and decided to upgrade the site to Joomla 2.5 + VM 2.0.x...
Suddenly, I find myself with not being able to sell e-books through VM unless I pay 35 euros for an extension...
The least you should do is have a table of differences between VM1.19 and 2.0 versions so we could advise our customers of this added cost...
thank you

[jenkinhill]

There is a choice of plugins. See http://forum.virtuemart.net/index.php?topic=103051.msg379678#msg379678

[Maxim Pishnyak]

Let me add my protest as well. I am a developer and my customer was on Joomla1.5 and VM 1.19

Believe me. Regular visitors of VM forum well informed.
It's only question how often you could visit VM2 Forum. If you so busy 'VM Developer' ...
If you decided to go on VM2 from VM1 it's your personal choise to read or not to read all VM2 threads from the first VM2 birthday.

Also it's personal honour of VM2 to have so huge amount of third party extensions made for their baby. Notice, extensions, not these all dumb hacks as it was for VM1.
Now VM developer really could feel themselves as developers that install extensions.

VM1 webmaster use hacks mostly.
So let's call that old generation as it deserved - VM1 hackers.

So wake up, VM2 is not equal to VM1.

It's another, better project. Don't expect that VM2 inherit all in-built features that was in VM1.

Especially if some features were bad for VM grow.
And yes, making this specific feature (downloadable products) in-built would be bad decision for Virtuemart:

• thirdparty developers involvement could paticipate in VM2 project and earn money for their work
• VM2 team has more time for VM core features development (it's their goal after all - to develop the core)

35 euros, you told? So it's too expensive for you to buy 35 holiday candles in Greece? Call Merkel support asap!

[Shimon Hirschhorn]

The unfortunate part about VM2 not supporting downloadable products is not the 35 EUR or 99 EUR.  It is the lack of integration with other modules, namely shipping.
The shipping modules don't work with the downloadable product modules.

Extremely frustrating.

[xfera]

Hello
It is too expensive. It should be a native feature in virtuemart. We'll build a free plugin for not abusing the future of a normal feature. I will also do free alternative to other extensions paid too much money. We'll hear soon.