Offering ZIP and Powerpoint files in the Digital Market

Hello permies,

I just uploaded my first Digital Market thread. It is a class package for teaching a permaculture classed called Forests or Deserts: a Choice. It includes a slide show, notes, an article, a bibliography, and instructions on how to use the resources and teach the class. Initially, I had preferred to offer all of the files ZIP-ped together in a single archive file for easy download. However, when I tried to upload a ZIP file, the forum code would not allow it. Then, I tried to upload the Powerpoint slide show presentation... alas, no .pptx file format upload allowed either.

So, what I ended up doing what exporting all 5 files to PDF and uploaded them each individually. Not ideal, IMO, but it will work for now. I'm okay keeping this as is if there is a reason that ZIP and .pptx file formats are not allowed in the Digital Market. If there is no standing reason, may I request that these file formats - or at least open source file formats such as .odf - be allowed in the Digital Market?

Thank you so much. :-)

I think .ppt files are going to be accessible for a larger number of people than .pptx. Are they allowed?

Also, presentations / slideshows like that tend to export well in image formats. .png and .bmp are lossless, while .jpg files are usually smaller.

T Melville wrote:I think .ppt files are going to be accessible for a larger number of people than .pptx. Are they allowed?

Also, presentations / slideshows like that tend to export well in image formats. .png and .bmp are lossless, while .jpg files are usually smaller.

Thanks, I'll try .ppt & see if that works.

As for the slideshow, it exported & uploaded just fine as an image-formatted PDF. The issue I have with that is that I have included click-able animations that only work with presentation software. These are didactic animations allowing more information to show on the slide as the presentation progresses, not aesthetic animations. They are therefore important animations for the flow during the slide show presentation.

Thanks again for your input. :-)

Zip files should work.  I wonder if we have a bug about it being upper case.

pptx:  i think you are the first person to try, so the system has not been told that pptx is okay.

I think i just now set it to allow ppt and pptx.

Cool thanks Paul. I appreciate your help. I'm going to try .zip lower cased, .ppt, & .pptx later today.

Then, on to Thread Boosting! :-)

Just confirmed that Powerpoint file format (.pptx) attachments do in fact now work in the Digital Market! Thank you so much Paul! You are AWESOME! :-)

Going to try to attach the .zip archive file again. For the record after double checking, previous attempts were made yesterday with .zip file format in lower case, though there were upper case letters in the file name preceding ".zip"...

Does anyone have thoughts about best practices for the quantity of Digital Market thread attachments? Personally, I am currently leaning towards having a single file (.zip archive) for sale even if I am selling multiple digital files on a single thread. The advantage with a single file as I see it is that folks can't make the mistake of missing out on downloading the other files that they have purchased. On the other hand, the downside would be that they need to have un-zipping software (such as the Free Open Source Software [FOSS] program 7zip [available for Windows & Linux] or the FOSS program keka [for macOS]) installed on their devices (or know how to install it) & know how to use it. Thoughts?

Thanks again for all the support here. It's been great. :-)

Update, error code: Files with the extension .zip are not allowed as attachment in the message.

I just found out that there is a current limitation for attaching zip files because bad guys wanna load them with viruses.   Devaka proposed a solution for you - coming soon!

Thanks for looking into it. Yeah, that's understandable; I've always been concerned about downloading .zip files for the same reason actually. Maybe I should just stick with the multiple files route (PDF's & powerpoint)...