downloadable products

[raggatt]

I am bumping this topic and chiming in to say I'm shocked that core VM3 doesn't provide for selling downloadable products.

I'm just a low-tech bumpkin who was selling downloadble files using HikaShop, but decided to try the well-respected VM.  I went ahead and purchased a VM template, and am now stuck with it and very unpleasantly surprised.  Downloadable products is not an "option" for me, it is a necessity.

Honestly, it never occurred to me that VM would not have such a basic function, since HikaShop and most other, less well-established shopping carts do.  As per the hamburger comparison.  It's like someone offering you a "free" burger and then charging you for the bun. 

Not only that, I'm looking at the 4 or 5 extensions available for VM3 for downloadable products, and none of them look that great. But since I've already bought the template and gotten it substantially up, I'm going to have to blindly gamble on one of them.

[jenkinhill]

I'm surpised that someone felt it necessary to re-open this old thread.

As the VM lead developer stated in Feb 2012 "It is also clearly a feature which is not need by the majority of virtuemart users."

And that is the reason why it is excluded. During the early days of VM2 development none of those trying/testing the dev versions requested this feature, so it was not included. The VM file package package was already so big that many users on shared hosts were unable to install in the normal way. Most VM users sell real shipped products just as they did back then.

A major problem with the old VM1 file download system was a lack of flexibility and real security, both of which are addressed in some of the available plugins.  If I needed to use a d/l plugin it would be this one:  http://extensions.virtuemart.net/shipments/shipment-for-virtual-products-detail