Download Issue/Problem Quick Fixes

Hi,

I had been having problems getting s2Member downloads (pdf in my case) working correctly and trawled various sites including this one to resolve the issues. To help out others with similar problems here is of summary of the fixes I needed to make (over several days!!):

1. Make sure you put the secure files that are only available to logged in users in the director wp-content/plugins/s2member-files/ This directory should be created when you install s2member. You may need to go into your website directory (e.g. using cpanel) to move the files from the normal upload directory to this secure directory. If you put them in your normal upload directory you will get 404 page not found errors or they will not be stored securely.

2. Apply the .htaccess edits to the .htaccess file in the main directory (public html) and the s2member-files directory. See https://s2member.com/kb-article/resolving-file-download-problems/ the main issue I had was that at one point all seemed to be working with downloads however several hours later it stopped again and it may have been due to my host compressing all files with gzip. If your main .htaccess file does not turn gzip off when downloading then see the same link in 1. above to find out how to add the necessary lines to .htaccess

3. Make sure there are no spaces or dashes in your download filenames. Use _ instead, e.g ‘file_name_1.pdf’ rather than ‘file name-1.pdf’

4. When you want to put a link to a download file use the following format:

https://www.your-site.com/?s2member_file_download=fiel_name_1.pdf

5. Follow-the s2member set-up procedure.

6. Set-up some test user accounts in your WordPress installation (subscriber level rather than administrator) and test on various browsers, computers and mobile devices. Clear the browser cache regularly whilst testing.

If you are creating a secure area of your website it would be good to make sure your site is https and providing secure encrypted connections to users to stop man-in-the-middle type attacks.

Good luck,

KJ