If you are using WordPress, and offer some downloadable files to your visitors/users and want to know how many times a particular file is downloaded, then here is a plugin which can come to the rescue. WordPress Download Monitor is a plugin which helps in uploading files, managing downloads, and it can even track how many times a particular file is downloaded. Cool right ?
This plugin features:
- Know how many times the files are downloaded (Records file download hits)
- Stats on downloads and a download log for viewing who downloaded when
- Use shortcode to place a download link anywhere
- Editor button – upload and add a download straight from a post (there’s a “Add download” button for this)
- Add downloads to text widgets, excerpts, the content, and custom fields
- Localization support
- And many more useful features
How to upload a file and get its download link
After installing this plugin, you can see a new menu in Dashboard. Expand this “Downloads” menu.
Click on Add New to add a new downloadable file. You’ll be presented with a form, just fill out all the details like title, version, description, upload file or enter the URL of the file, download mirrors, categories, and tags. Skip filling out fields which are not important. Finally click on “Upload & Save” button. The file will be uploaded and saved.
Now its time to get the download link. Go to Downloads > Edit and right click the file name and click on “Copy link location“. Place this download link anywhere. From now onwards, this plugin will track how many times your file is downloaded. To know this, just go to “Dashboard” and you can see a new screen there, Top 5 Downloads. And it doesn’t end here, go to Downloads menu and click on Log. From here you can know the IP address of the user who downloaded the file and also its date and time. This plugin can really present exhaustive information.
If you have many downloadable files on your site and want to track information about when and how many times they are downloaded, then try this plugin, its worth it.
How to install this plugin
Installing this plugin is just like any other WordPress plugin. Go to Plugins > Add New and enter the name of the plugin in Search box and hit “Search”. From the results displayed, click on “Install”.
Or you can head over to its official page, and download the plugin. After downloading, unzip it and upload it to wp-content/plugins. To upload you can use cPanel’s file manager or FTP client like FileZilla.
Mrinmay Bhattacharjee says
Great Plugin Buddy :)
teach says
wow.. this is a great tool for monitoring downloads for files