How to Track Number of Downloads on a WordPress Blog

Recently I have designed a new WordPress theme FreshBrown. After publishing it for users, I was looking for a way to track the number of downloads of this theme. While searching for it on Google, I came across a WordPress plugin WordPress Download Monitor and fell in love with this plugin. It’s an awesome plugin which gives you the number of downloads of the files along with the IP address of the user who downloaded the file.

WordPress Download Monitor is a plugin for uploading and managing downloads, tracking download hits and displaying links.

Features of WordPress Download Monitor

• NEW: Built in Download Page function with built-in sorting, pagination, and search.
• Records file download hits but does **not** count downloads by WordPress admin users.
• Stats on downloads and a download log for viewing who downloaded when.
• Uses shortcodes (backward compatible with old [Download id not defined] style).
• Editor button upload and add a download straight from a post.
• Custom redirects to downloads.
• Add downloads to text widgets, the content, excerpts, and custom fields.
• Mirror support (selected at random) + mirror deadlink checker
• Download Categories.
• Member only downloads, can also have a minimum user level using custom fields.
• Localization support.
• Admin for managing downloads and also changing hit counts just in case you change servers or import old downloads that already have stats.
• Custom URL’s/URL hider using mod_rewrite.

Installation Instructions

Follow the steps given below to install and configure this plugin on your WordPress blog.

• First download and install WordPress Download Monitor plugin and activate it from your WordPress dashboard.
• After activating the plugin, you will see a new Downloads tab on the left hand side of your dashboard.
• Now upload a new file for which you want to track number of downloads from Downloads menu by clicking on Add New link. You can also use existing file by using Add Existing link.
• From the configuration menu, you can set Download categories, Custom Output Formats, Custom Download URL and General Options.
• Go to Configuration and then Custom Output Format and type in the custom output format for your downloads. I’m going to use the following output for my downloads

  <a href="{url}" title="Downloaded {hits} times">{title}</a> - {description}

  You can use custom output according to your requirements by using the tags given.

• Now go to General Options and chose your default output format that you just created.
• Now comes the main step. Go to post editor and click on Add Download link.
• Now insert the file into your post.

That’s all. Now you can track the downloads for your files from your dashboard only.

Link: Download “WordPress Download Monitor plugin”

Another Method to Track Download Hits

If you don’t want to use any plugin to track the download hits, then simply upload your files to Mediafire and get a share link for your files from there. Mediafire provides download statistics for all the files. This is the simplest method that I use most of the times 🙂