Version 1.7 Released
After more than a full month of development, Easy Digital Downloads version 1.7 has been released! Once again, this release brings numerous new features, a huge number of minor improvements, and a significant number of bug fixes.
Simple, Beautiful Checkout
Prettier, More Versatile Styles
We have completely rewritten the checkout CSS to make it more attractive, more flexible, and more compatible with a wider variety of themes.
Better Checkout Layout
The position of each field on the checkout has been carefully reconsidered to ensure it is in the proper location so as to best create high conversion rates.
Item Quantities
Selling Licenses or Multiple Copies at Once? With the new item quantities feature, your customers can choose how many of an item they wish to purchase at one time.
Makes Bulk Purchases Simple. No longer is purchasing many copies of the same item difficult or tedious. Simply enter the quantity and complete the purchase.
Direct to PayPal Purchase Buttons
The Direct purchase option allows you to create Buy Now buttons that take your customers straight to PayPal, completely bypassing the checkout screen.
Higher Turnover Rates. By sending your customers straight to PayPal, you can dramatically increase your conversion rates by reducing the amount of friction in the purchase process.
Multiple Discount Codes Per Purchase
Offer Bigger, Better Promotions. With the Ability to redeem multiple discount codes per purchase, you can give your customers even more incentives to purchase your products.
Additional Updates
Brought Back [download_history]. The return of the [download_history] short code was one of our most common user requests since it was removed. We listened and it is back!
Customer Reports Search. Want to find out how much a customer has spent, or how many customers you have with a specific domain\’s email address? Now you can.
Settings Import / Export. The ability to export and import all store settings makes the process of moving sites from development to live a lot easier.
Full Retina Support. Every image and icon used in Easy Digital Downloads has been remade with complete support for high resolution / retina displays.
Better Admin Notifications .The admin sale notification emails can now be completely customized in the same way as purchase receipts. Want to know all details of the customer? Now you can.
Improved Performance. Several key areas (such as Payment History) of Easy Digital Downloads have been dramatically improved in terms of performance to make your site run better and faster.
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Great!
(There is one [downloads_history] in text, it’s [download_history]).
Corrected!
Superb. As always
Where do you implement the item quantities? Not seeing it. Thanks.
You have to enable it from Downloads > Settings > Misc.
Hi Pippin
Re the message “In order for WP Super Cache to work with Easy Digital Downloads you must enable dynamic caching in WP Super Cache settings” – Before I upgraded I had excluded all URL strings with the word “downloads” in it, which meant that I could continue using mod_rewrite to serve cache files, something you can’t do if you enable dynamic caching.
I was hoping to continue with this setup because the plug-in was working just fine this way and my host tells me my site would load faster using mod_rewrite. But now that I’ve updated, I permanently have the warning message, which I didn’t before.
Can I get rid of this message or would you advise against the way I have it set up at the moment?
Thanks
Bob
I can show you how to get rid of the message if you fine with a custom code snippet.
I’m not great with custom code, but if you can let me know what the code is and exactly where to stick it, so to speak, I’d sure be happy to have a go. I use Thesis if that makes any difference. Thanks Pippin, Bob
Go ahead and open a ticket and I’ll help you remove it. Tickets are easier for providing custom code.
Hmm, I tried to register so that I could open a support ticket, but it kept saying Error: invalid username. I tried four different usernames but got the same each time.
So, I’m stuck.
Good job, Pippin!!!
Great work Pippin, thanks for the update.
With the “Direct to Paypal” feature.. what happens if the product needs licensing and the user isn’t logged in when they click the button?
It will automatically retrieve the info from PayPal 🙂
Great stuff, but I guess if the user already has an account, is not logged in and has a different paypal email than their account email it will create a new account? If so it would be great to have a “merge account” feature to clean those up.
What happens if the user is not logged in and uses this feature (with a matching paypal/account email)? Does it find the right account and add the order to it?
Are you referring g to the Buy Now buttons?
Yeh the new “Direct to Paypal” buttons
If the user is logged in, it will default to the email address stored in their user account. If the user is logged out, it will retrieve the email from PayPal after the customer pays.
Will it use that paypal email to match with an existing account if they are not logged in?
No, but that’s a great idea!
Looks like a problem there then.. because if an account with that email already exists, it either won’t create an account (possibly failing with an error) or it will create a duplicate
Accounts aren’t created with buy now buttons.
Ok so if the product needs licensing and the user hasn’t created an account and uses the “buy now” button.. what happens?
Licensing doesn’t require accounts, so it acts as usual.
So how do they get the license key, via email? And they have some kind of secure direct link to the download?
Via email and also on the purchase confirmation page after completing the PayPal payment.
Thanks for the update!
I’m not seeing the “have a discount code?” section anywhere on my new checkout page. Is there something I have to do to enable that? Before the update it appeared just fine at the bottom of the checkout page as a box, but now I’m not seeing it anywhere!
Have you customized any of the plugin’s template files?
The only templates I’ve customized are “widget-cart-item.php” and “reviews.php” (the review addon). I do have a few other bits of code but they’re not full template replacements. For example, I added an additional field to the checkout using the actions and filters.
Could you open a ticket and include your Downloads > System Info with it?
Will do – thank you! 🙂
Here is your bug for orders not updating to pending. It only affects products that are not priced at a whole number (e.g. $33.50) either with or without a discount code applied.
/includes/gateways/paypal-standard.php line:398 (roughly)
WRONG:
if ( number_format( (float) $paypal_amount, 2 ) < number_format( (float) $payment_amount) ) {
FIXED:
if ( number_format( (float) $paypal_amount, 2 ) < number_format( (float) $payment_amount, 2 ) ) {
You didn't format both payment amounts in the same way before comparing.
PLEASE test your updates more thoroughly in future, it caused myself and my customers a big headache tonight. I am constantly finding problems in your software and spending too much time fixing and debugging.
You’re right, that is incorrect. Thank you for catching it.
In regards to testing: we test extensively. This site (and several others) ran the beta versions of 1.7 for 3 entire weeks before releasing. Of course there will always be bugs; there’s no such thing as bug free software. We do our best to catch them all and fix any we find as quickly as possible.
Note that we released two separate beta versions of v1.7 with plenty of time for it to be tested. It is the responsibility of the site owner to ensure new software versions are properly tested before being deployed to a live site. This is why we always strongly recommend users have a staging environment setup to test new versions before launching them on live sites.
EDD is also 100% open source and you, and anyone else, is more than welcome to contribute to the core code, both with patches (such as this), bug reports, or enhancement suggestions.
IMO it is questionable labelling EDD as 100% open source, considering you charge for modules that make the software more functional and in most use cases they are required. There is nothing wrong with this of course, but it means you are a commercial operation and have a commitment to your paying customers.
Releasing a couple of beta versions and expecting your customers to test them is unrealistic, especially considering the type of software you are selling. I would never install a beta version of EDD as it directly affects my sales and reputation with my customers (I might install beta versions of desktop software that affects me only). There is absolutely no benefit to me or other users to install beta versions and deal with bugs – I pay for software to avoid this time sink.
Fair enough, all software has bugs and some will slip the net. EDD is great overall and I would love to see more invested into the testing side of things, as trust me that will help you grow and will give more confidence to professionals using your software.
The commercial extensions are all GPL as well. Remember, GPL doesn’t necessarily mean free, it means users are free to do as they wish with the code.
We don’t release beta versions and expect every user to test it; we release beta versions so that those users who do wish to test it before final release can test it. In our three week beta period, at least 5-10 bugs were discovered and fixed by proactive users. This is one of the beauties of GPL; those users that choose and want to contribute can.
We strongly encourage ALL users to have a staging environment not because we expect there to be bugs, but because ecommerce sites are often the primary means of income for their owners. Choosing to install new versions of software (regardless of what it is) without testing it could very easily be seen as irresponsible. This scenario could easily be compared to buying a new motor for your car, installing it, then leaving on a road trip without properly testing to ensure the motor is functioning.
Note, I’m not personally calling you or your clients out, just explaining why we believe it is critically important to always test new versions, no matter how much you trust (or don’t) us as the developers of your ecommerce platform.
Note: Download link in top menu (on the right) is version 1.6.4.
Thanks for catching that.