FTP Upload of Downloadable Files

[ghinton]

I sell digital files. I have nearly 1000 products, which have up to 6 versions of each, meaning I have nearly 6000 files to upload. I tried doing an FTP upload to the folder where my files would be located, but when creating a product those files did not show up under the Digital tab. 

Do I have to do it through File Manager > Downloads? I plan on bulk importing the products since I can create them in a spreadsheet much faster, but if I manually have to upload each file and then link it, it will take forever!

[bsmither]

There are two ways to go about this.

One way is to make the FileManager know about all the digital download files (the 'digital' products) that reside in the /files/ directory. (I haven't done this myself, but) I believe after you have FTP'd all your files, then in CubeCart's admin, Downloads, the Download FileManager has an "Update File List" tab. Clicking this should load the FileManager database table with records for all files found in the /files/ directory.

Then, it becomes the tedious process of assigning a file to a product.

The reason is that the Inventory record holds a 'digital' pointer to the target FileManager record for that file. This is supposed to offer a measure of flexibility, probably for future expansion - similar to how images for a product are managed.

A second way is when you bulk import products, the CSV file can have a 'digital_path' column that contains the actual, complete path to the file, wherever it may reside on the server - and if expressed as a full URL, that file can exist elsewhere. So, for this 'digital_path' value, the options are:
* special_folder/product_7_file.zip (relative to CubeCart's main folder)
* /server_root/path_to_some_folder_your_PHP_script_has_access_to/product_7_file.zip
* hllp://www.site.com/product_7_file.zip

Later, when editing that product, if CubeCart cannot find the file on the server, there will be a warning banner displayed.

When importing a CSV file, if you have a column 'digital', then to use this effectively, you will need to know the FileManager file_id for the product file.

Then, according to your post, you plan to have a separate file associated with each option for the main product - like, sizes of an image, or bit-rates for MP3s?

[keat]

Unrelated to cubecart, I seem to recall an FTP upload limitation of about 2000 entries.

However, for the life of me I can't remember if this was an FTP program limitation or a directory listing issue.

 

Maybe it's connected, maybe it's not.