Please please can someone help me. I am new to this and I am going crazy with frustration! I have a Presenter project that I have added to our website. Clients can purchase it and then download it. They get an encrypted link, download the project, save it to their pc and away they go. The trouble is, the attachments do not work. I have tried publishing to CD rather than web after reading a thread on here, but when I do that, I get an error message after downloading it saying that the zip file is empty - even though it contains 17MB of data.
What am I doing wrong? I am not very web techie so please go easy on me.
Hello and welcome to Heroes! My first question would be why are you making the content available for offline viewing rather than making it available online? If a person has to be online to get to the content, there's really no reason to make it available offline. That's not a very friendly user experience as you are finding out. Here's why:
You need to create a zip file for people to download. Many people don't know how to work with zip files. Trust me. I see cases every day where the only issue is the person doesn't know how to work with zip files.
You need do to instruct the end-user how to unzip the files and launch the presentation via the Launch_presentation.exe file. This is just not a user friendly experience to me. I would much rather pay for something, be provided with a URL, click it and view the presentation. Why make unnecessary hurdles?
Viewing Flash content offline, as you are finding out, is messy at best due to modern day security on operating systems, web browsers and even Flash player.
I would highly recommend reconsidering how you are setting this up. Even if you create a basic pay wall between that requires that someone log into view the content they purchased, that is going to be a much more user friendly experience and much less of a hassle to maintain. Like, for example, if you make changes to a presentation, that person wouldn't have to download yet another presentation.
If you want help troubleshooting why the download is not working for you, I would submit a case:
My own feeling on this, though, is that you should avoid that method altogether. To host and deliver Articulate content, and to track user progress, we recommend using Articulate Online, which supports one-click publishing from Articulate authoring tools, and offers super-easy reporting capabilities. You can learn more about Articulate Online here:
If you purchase a plan that includes the API, or if you purchase the API separately, you can definitely integrate an e-commerce solution as noted in this article:
Ok, I understand what you are saying but this is a start up operation for us and we do not have the budget to purchase Articulate Online. Also, we recently lost our website designer so I am trying to pick up where he left off and just get this thing working. We have a deadline for getting some of this operational for a contract and it is fast approaching!
I only have a very basic knowledge of web technology so I need a simple solution for now. When we get this going, we will be able to fund an upgrade and probably purchase an LMS but we are not there yet.
I read something on the forums about removing some code in the player to get the attachmemts working but I am not sure how to action this.....do you know?
Removing code from the player would not help you with the Attachments issue. I would suggest you submit a case if you really want to use downloaded files.
However, if you already have your website set up to restrict access to pages, you might already have what you need to restrict access to online content. That would be the ideal method of doing this, rather than trying to support your current process.
Thanks Justin, I do appreciate your help and I fully understand what you are saying about the methodolgy here. My problem is that I am taking this on three quarters of the way through when we have promised a client that we will get this working for their training needs. Our website is currently undergoing a re-vamp so the restricted pages are not restricted at present. However, I will throw all of this into the pot at the next project meeting for the re-design.
Should publishing to CD work? I saw this as a solution to a similar problem in the forum and it worked for the lady concerned. I tried it and I get an error when trying to extract from the zip file. It tells me that the zip file is empty although I can see that 13mb have downloaded.
First I agree with everything Justin has said. The issue you have is that you are running articulate locally and then trying to access files on the internet. Flash was specifically designed to ensure you cannot do this, it is a security issue. There are two ways around this, you can give instructions to all of the people who download it, for how to change their security settings to allow the content to play. Or, you can publish to CD which circumvents the security and allows access to the internet. You obviously as Justin stated then need to let the purchasers know how to launch via the .exe file. This is not an elegant solution and I do believe you will have a lot of customer service enqiuries, it also does not help Mac users who cannot run the .exe file or windows xp user where zip software is not built in.
Your issue with your zip file not downloading correctly may be due to the exe file in the zip file, your firewall or antivirus software may be preventing you running this.
I would take articulate up on their offer to help with you solution
7 Replies
Hello and welcome to Heroes! My first question would be why are you making the content available for offline viewing rather than making it available online? If a person has to be online to get to the content, there's really no reason to make it available offline. That's not a very friendly user experience as you are finding out. Here's why:
I would highly recommend reconsidering how you are setting this up. Even if you create a basic pay wall between that requires that someone log into view the content they purchased, that is going to be a much more user friendly experience and much less of a hassle to maintain. Like, for example, if you make changes to a presentation, that person wouldn't have to download yet another presentation.
If you want help troubleshooting why the download is not working for you, I would submit a case:
http://www.articulate.com/support/contact/method.php
My own feeling on this, though, is that you should avoid that method altogether. To host and deliver Articulate content, and to track user progress, we recommend using Articulate Online, which supports one-click publishing from Articulate authoring tools, and offers super-easy reporting capabilities. You can learn more about Articulate Online here:
http://www.articulate.com/products/articulate-online.php
You can sign up for a free 30-day trial of Articulate Online here:
http://www.articulate.com/downloads/freetrial-step1.aspx
If you purchase a plan that includes the API, or if you purchase the API separately, you can definitely integrate an e-commerce solution as noted in this article:
http://www.articulate.com/blog/6-examples-of-whats-possible-with-the-articulate-online-api-e-commerce-more/
If Articulate Online does not meet your needs, you can track Articulate content in any SCORM- or AICC-compliant Learning Management System (LMS). Here are some low cost LMS you might want to consider:
http://daveperso.mediaenglishonline.com/2009/10/29/getting-your-own-lms-part-1-dokeos-campus/
http://daveperso.mediaenglishonline.com/2009/12/23/getting-your-own-lms-part-2-efront/
http://daveperso.mediaenglishonline.com/2010/01/22/getting-your-own-lms-part-3-docebo/
http://daveperso.mediaenglishonline.com/2010/11/11/getting-your-own-lms-part-4-moodle/
Ok, I understand what you are saying but this is a start up operation for us and we do not have the budget to purchase Articulate Online. Also, we recently lost our website designer so I am trying to pick up where he left off and just get this thing working. We have a deadline for getting some of this operational for a contract and it is fast approaching!
I only have a very basic knowledge of web technology so I need a simple solution for now. When we get this going, we will be able to fund an upgrade and probably purchase an LMS but we are not there yet.
I read something on the forums about removing some code in the player to get the attachmemts working but I am not sure how to action this.....do you know?
Removing code from the player would not help you with the Attachments issue. I would suggest you submit a case if you really want to use downloaded files.
http://www.articulate.com/support/contact/method.php
However, if you already have your website set up to restrict access to pages, you might already have what you need to restrict access to online content. That would be the ideal method of doing this, rather than trying to support your current process.
Thanks Justin, I do appreciate your help and I fully understand what you are saying about the methodolgy here. My problem is that I am taking this on three quarters of the way through when we have promised a client that we will get this working for their training needs. Our website is currently undergoing a re-vamp so the restricted pages are not restricted at present. However, I will throw all of this into the pot at the next project meeting for the re-design.
Thanks again.
Jenny.
...me again.
Should publishing to CD work? I saw this as a solution to a similar problem in the forum and it worked for the lady concerned. I tried it and I get an error when trying to extract from the zip file. It tells me that the zip file is empty although I can see that 13mb have downloaded.
Hi Jennifer
First I agree with everything Justin has said. The issue you have is that you are running articulate locally and then trying to access files on the internet. Flash was specifically designed to ensure you cannot do this, it is a security issue. There are two ways around this, you can give instructions to all of the people who download it, for how to change their security settings to allow the content to play. Or, you can publish to CD which circumvents the security and allows access to the internet. You obviously as Justin stated then need to let the purchasers know how to launch via the .exe file. This is not an elegant solution and I do believe you will have a lot of customer service enqiuries, it also does not help Mac users who cannot run the .exe file or windows xp user where zip software is not built in.
Your issue with your zip file not downloading correctly may be due to the exe file in the zip file, your firewall or antivirus software may be preventing you running this.
I would take articulate up on their offer to help with you solution
Phil
Thankyou Phil.
This is a very good example of why 'web stuff' is best left to the experts!!
I appreciate your help and I have approached Articulate to see what they can do.
Jenny.
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