Selling an ebook with Foxycart on our website

I am very new at this, and appreciate the help that members of this forum have given me to learn about modx. I’m not a developer or programmer, I’m the person in the office who is supposed to manage our social networking and book sales - our developer has flown the coop, we have our site hosted, but there is no one to tell me how this stuff works, so I am figuring it out by the seat of my pants. The tutorials people have suggested are excellent.

So here is my new question:

We currently sell items through the website. I understand how to add an item for purchase in the document tree under our online store - the designer set that up pretty clearly. But those are all things that people order, pay for, and then we ship it. What’s different now is that we have an ebook. We’d like people to buy the ebook - and here’s what I don’t understand - how then do we set up an automated link for them to download the ebook they have just paid for?

Currently, if they buy the hardback, they pay through the shopping cart and paypal notifies us of the purchase. It seems to me there’s an extra step here in giving them the link to the ebook they paid for - and I am not sure what to do with that.

Is this a modx question or a foxycart question? If it’s a foxycart question, what are the resources for support there?

No one in my office knows what I am talking about. They tell me we don’t have foxycart we have paypal, they don’t understand what foxycart is. (yes we have foxycart, it is right there in the code for the online store) My boss thinks I can just call paypal and they’ll tell me how to do this. I don’t think paypal handles downloads of ebooks, just the money processing.

Thanks a bunch, folks, I really appreciate the help you are giving me in this muddle.

Janet,

This is primarily a "MODx Question", but also part FoxyCart ...so you’re in the right place!

FoxyCart indeed supports "Downloadables" (eBooks, etc), as well as the shippable products you mentioned, or even subscription based products (recurring payment), etc. The integration you are looking for occurs within MODx framework (Product Pages) but has ties to the FoxyCart system. MODx would be responsible for displaying the correct "link" passing to FoxyCart a new, downloadable cart item prior to Checkout.  PayPal is simply your payment gateway integrated via FoxyCart.

Downloadable
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Downloadable products are just like regular products as far as how they’re added, but there is a very important difference in that downloadable products must first be uploaded to your store [FoxyCart]. When you upload your product, you’ll assign a code and a category to it. You’ll use the code and the category attributes, rather than the name and price.

I am very familiar with both MODx and FoxyCart, as they are my preferred solution for all of my e-Commerce projects! I have not personally worked with Downloadables yet, however the key difference appears to be the way integration must also occur on the FoxyCart side before-hand. Depending on how your developer set you up, you might be able to access your "Downloadable" within your FoxyCart admin section. However, it sounds like this step may not have occurred yet....If that is the case, you would likely need to work on setting up the Downloadable product, mapping it to the correct eBook file (PDF), and updating the Product page/website to reference this new "Downloadable" product code/category opposed to the standard name/price. Of course, I don’t literally mean YOU, unless you’d like to learn the MODx API or FoxyCart system

Hi Janet.
Did Pixelchute’s response help you? If you’re still stuck just post back with your current situation, or try the FoxyCart forum.

Thank you, yes pixelchutes answer sheds some light on it. Looks like I will be recommending that we get a freelancer to set this up if I can’t locate the person who did the original design. No one in this office is even aware what foxycart is, let alone what kind of set up we have with them. The downloadable thing is the problem.