WordPress is a powerful content management system that can enable downloading files by using specific plugins, blocks, or custom links.

In this article, you’ll learn how to download files from WordPress in every possible way.

Why Download Files from WordPress

There are various reasons why you would like to share files with your site’s visitors:

• Email list – a downloadable file such as a video, eBook, or PDF will encourage visitors to signup for your email list.
• Revenue – you can use WordPress to sell downloadable goods and increase your revenue. The customer will be able to download the file after checking out.
• Convenient – long articles take time to read. The option to download the article to their local computer will allow your readers to keep reading the content while offline.
• Cheatsheets – sometimes you’ll need to add additional value to your content to outrank your competitors. A good example is the provided downloadable cheatsheet we included in the Embed YouTube WordPress article.

Choosing the approach on how to add a downloadable file to your WordPress website depends on what you would like to achieve.

If you’re using your website to sell digital goods such as images, plugins like Easy Digital Downloads or WooCommerce will be wise choices.

These are very robust plugins that can handle many download requests. In addition, they all include payment gateways and dedicated pages with images and descriptions for every item.

On the other hand, if you want to send a download link to email subscribers, creating a form with Contact Form 7 and integrating it with Mailchimp is the right way.

Regardless of your choice, the first step is to host your file on an online server. You can use upload files plugins, access WordPress with FTP, or use cloud services such as Amazon S3 or Dropbox.

Once your file is hosted online, move on to the following sections and learn how to download files from WordPress using links, plugins, and blocks.

Download File from WordPress with Gutenberg Block

The Gutenberg editor has many great blocks to help you style your website.

A useful one to download files is the File block, and you can add it by clicking on the plus icon and then selecting it.

After adding the block, upload the desired file or choose it straight from the media library.

A hyperlink with the file’s name and a download button will be added to the content. You can click on it to enter your custom text and even toggle off the download button to display just the link by itself.

Once finished, update the page and test the button to ensure it’s downloading the file.

Download File from WordPress with a Link

Using a link is a simple way to implement a downloadable file in your blog’s content.

In cases where displaying a download button is overwhelming, an HTML text link will be the way to go.

First, you’ll need to upload the desired file to your WordPress website or other hosting services.

To upload the file to WordPress, navigate to Media -> Add New and upload the desired file.

Please note that WordPress only allows adding certain file types, such as documents, images, videos, and zip. If you want to create a download link to any other file, use Amazon S3 or Dropbox.

Once you have uploaded the file, click and copy it to the clipboard. We will need to use it shortly.

Then, edit the page or post to whom you would like to add the link and highlight the relevant text.

Click on the link icon, paste the file URL of the downloadable file, and save the page.

Once saved, visit the page, click the link to verify it’s working as expected, and download the file to your computer.

With some specific files, like PDF documents, images, and videos, clicking on the link will open the file in a new tab or even a popup.

You’ll need to add the download attribute to the <a> tag to change the default behavior and force the download.

Accessing the link tag will require you to use the code editor, therefore, click on the three dots icon on the right and choose the code editor.

Then, spot the <a> link and add the download attribute to the end of it, just before the closing bracket.

<a href="file-path-goes-here" download>hyperlink text</a>

Once saved, revisit the page and click on the link once again. If done correctly, it will download the file instead of just displaying it.

Create a Download Button

Consider displaying it with a button to take your download link further. A button will draw more attention from visitors and have a better chance of being clicked on.

Click on the plus icon and select a new Gutenberg button block.

Please enter your custom text and use the link icon to attach the file to it. Then, use the sidebar on the right to customize the button’s style, like background color and size.

Once done, switch back to the code editor and add the download attribute to the <a> tag of the button.

When switching back to the visual editor, WordPress will notify you that the block contains unexpected or invalid content. Ignore the message, update the page and test the button to make sure you can download the file.

Download File from WordPress with a Plugin

Using the link methods above is excellent when you only have small files to share with your crowd. However, it is minimal with its data and requires you some work to set it out.

Another solution for you to let your visitors download files from your WordPress website is by using a plugin.

A plugin is a right choice when you want to manage your files. Create a dedicated page for each and get statistics such as how many times it was downloaded.

There are many great download plugins with different features, but in this tutorial, I would like to focus on Simple Download Monitor because of its ease of use.

First, navigate to Plugins -> Add New and install the Simple Download Monitor plugin.

Once activated, navigate to Downloads -> Add New and fill the relevant fields such as name, description, feature image, and download link.

The simple download monitor plugin will create a custom dedicated page for every download. You can access the page by clicking on the View Download link in the admin bar.

You can now send your visitors to that page to download the file or use a shortcode to display the download link in any other post or page.

Scroll to the shortcodes section on the download’s editor page and copy the first shortcode.

Then, add a new Gutenberg shortcode block to your desired page or post, and paste the shortcode inside.

Once saved, a styled button was added to the content, and you can click on it to test the download.

If you want to use the download link in a text, copy the direct download link instead of the button and use it in the HTML editor, just as we showed in the first method.

To view the statistic of how many people clicked on the link, navigate to the downloads tab and look under the downloads column.

Conclusion

Combining downloadable files with your content is a smart strategy to encourage your visitors to engage and take action.

This article taught us when, why, and how to download files from WordPress websites in multiple ways.

Leave us a comment and let us know which way you chose to achieve this task.

The post How to Add Downloadable Files Anywhere on Your WordPress Website (3 Methods) appeared first on PluginsForWP.

There are many redirect methods like 301, 302, 307, but in this tutorial, we’ll only focus on the standard 301. The other techniques are barely used, not SEO friendly, and are out of the scope of this tutorial.

What is 301 Redirect in WordPress

301 redirect is a way to redirect our site visitors from one page to another. For example, if our site’s visitors are trying to visit ‘Page A’ and the page is no longer available, they will be redirected to ‘Page B’ instead.

With the 301 redirect method, the browser will inform search engines about the deleted page and save you from losing visitors.

We’re keeping the traffic on our website when the users aren’t aware of the redirection when using it.

When to Create a 301 Redirect

You guessed it right. You’ll need to set a 301 redirect in a few cases. Here are a couple of common reasons when to create it.

• When you deleted a page and you want to redirect that page traffic to a different page or a blog post with the same subject.
• When you changed the URL of a page or a blog post and you want the older URL to redirect the traffic to the new URL.

If you didn’t set up a 301 redirect, a visitor trying to view your deleted page will reach a 404 page (page can’t be found) and leave your website.

Not creating a 301 redirect will also affect your SEO drastically. How so? Think about your site visitor reading your blog post about the Paleo Diet. The user clicked on your link after searching for Paleo diets on Google. If the visitor sees a 404 page, he will immediately return to Google, and that will increase your bounce rate.

Also, when Google crawls your website and faces the 404 instead of the Paleo Diet page, it won’t re-index that URL again. Thus, the page will disappear from the search results.

If you created a 301 redirect, Google bots will crawl and index the new page and send traffic your way.

Now you understand how important it is to create a 301 redirect after deleting or changing the URL of a page or a post.

There are a couple of ways to create a WordPress 301 redirect, and in this tutorial, we will show you both ways.

The first way will be with a WordPress plugin, and the second way will be by modifying the .htaccess file. Let’s start by using a WordPress plugin.

How to Create 301 Redirect With a Plugin

Today, there are WordPress plugins for everything. And yes, there are plugins to help you to create redirects too.

In this tutorial, the plugin that we will use is ‘Easy Redirect Manager.’

Step #1 Install and activate ‘Easy Redirect Manager’.

The first step is to install and activate the plugin. From your WordPress dashboard, navigate to Plugins -> Add new and search for ‘Easy Redirect Manager.’

Click on Install and then Activate.

Step #2 Create the redirect rules

After activating the plugin, navigate to Settings -> 301 Redirects.

Below the Redirect Rules tab, you’ll have a simple interface to create redirect rules.

Under the ID column on the left, make sure it’s set as a 301 redirect rule.

In the redirect from column, your website name is grey out, so you won’t be able to change it.

Enter the URL of the page you would like to redirect from without the root website address (because it’s already there – the greyed-out one).

You’ll have a drop-down menu with some options on the Redirect To column. If you choose the custom option, you’ll need to enter the new page or post the URL address, including the website name.

This option is excellent for redirecting a page to a completely different website.

If you choose a different menu option like ‘Post,’ ‘Page,’ or ‘Template,’ choose the desired destination without entering the URL address.

After setting up the 301 redirect rule, click on the Save button on the right.

Step #3: Test the redirect rule

After we set it up, we shall test and ensure that the Redirect is working. Open the old URL that doesn’t exist anymore, and if done right, we will be redirected to the new URL that we entered.

If you’ve been redirected to the new URL, you did it right. It’s working. You’re keeping the visitors to your website and Googles’ bots happy.

Next, I would like to show you how to create a 301 redirect through the .htaccess file without using a plugin.

How to Create a 301 Redirect Using the htaccess File

In this section, I would like to show you how to create redirections from inside your htaccess file.

When creating the redirect rule in your .htaccess file, you skip the middle-man and speed up the process.

When creating the 301 redirect rule in your .htaccess file, you don’t use that middle-man, resulting in a quicker process.

Please note, I do NOT recommend this method to WordPress newbies. While editing the htaccess file, any small mistake can prevent your website from loading up. Thus, before editing the htaccess file, you’ll need to create a backup and restore it if needed.

If you still want to edit your .htaccess file, you’ll need access to your WordPress website using an FTP client or through your MySQL panel.

You can contact your host provider for more information or ask them to set it up for you.

I will access the htaccess file using an FTP client in this tutorial.

1. Open your FTP software, use FileZilla, and connect with your website server.

2. The .htaccess file should be in the root folder of your website. The htaccess file may be hidden, if you’re using FileZilla, follow these steps here to expose it.

   After you found the file, drag it to your desktop (or another folder) to keep it as a backup in case something goes wrong.

3. Scroll down to the bottom of the file and add this code:

   RewriteEngine On
   Redirect 301 /old-url/ http://example.com/new-url/ 

   You’ll need to change the example.com with your websites’ URL address.

   

   You can add as many redirects as you wish, each Redirect in a new line.

   

   After you have done it, save the file.

4. Once saved, navigate to the old post URL address. You’ll be redirected to the new page or post URL address if done right.

Conclusion

This article taught you why, when, and how to create WordPress redirect rules.

If you have any questions or comments, please let us know using the comments box below.

The post How to Create 301 Redirects in WordPress Between Pages or Blog Posts appeared first on PluginsForWP.

In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to create a WordPress child theme in a few different ways.

But first of all, let’s find out what is a child theme and why we need it.

What is a Child Theme

A WordPress child theme is a limited version of the parent theme, sits on top of it, and inherits the design and functionality of the parent theme.

When both themes, the parent and the child, are activated, WordPress will prioritize the child-theme files over the parent theme and deliver them first.

For example, let’s say that your parent theme has a style.css file with body {background: white;}. If the child theme style.css file has body {background: blue;}, it will overwrite the parent theme style and paint the body tag with a blue background color.

WordPress will automatically load the parent theme files if your child theme doesn’t have the parent theme files instead.

Why Creating a Child Theme

We need to create a WordPress child theme to add or modify the core files of our website.

Alternatively, you can also create a custom plugin for using functions. Please read our article on how to create a site-specific custom plugin.

Let’s take the background color of the body tag, for example, once again. If you want to change the background color to blue, you can modify the style.css file of the parent theme and change it there.

However, when updating the parent theme, the changes you made will get lost and overwritten by the more updated version.

Therefore, a child theme is a crucial component to have when building a website. The changes will stay and roll over with the new update when you have a child theme installed.

Creating a WordPress child theme is a quick and easy process that I highly recommend.

In the next section, we will show you two ways how to make it. Choose the way that suits you most.

How to Create a Child Theme in WordPress

There are a few ways to create a child theme in WordPress. You can use an online generator, a plugin, or code it yourself.

Let’s go through some of the options down below.

Method #1: Create a Child Theme with an Online Generator

We will use an online generator website to create our child theme in this method. This is an excellent way to make one without installing any plugin on our website. Therefore, it’s quick and easy.

1. Navigate to the child-theme generator website.
2. Click on the Create a WordPress Child Theme now button.
   
   
   
   

3. In the ‘Parent Theme’ field, start typing the name of your parent theme. When ordering, the website will load some options relevant to what you’re typing in for you. You then choose the parent theme name from the available options.

   

   If you don’t know what’s your parent theme name is, log in to your WordPress website and from your dashboard, navigate to Appearance -> Themes. The activated theme (the one on the top left) is your parent theme.

   The generator will auto-generate the parent slug based on the theme you chose.

   In the Name of your Child Theme field, type your parent theme name with a dashing child added in the end, for example, oceanwp-child.

   The slug of your Child Theme will match the name of your child theme.

   The Author’s email address and the Author’s Name are just extra details that will be added to the style.css File of the child theme. It doesn’t matter what you’re entering there.

   When done, click on the Create your child theme now button.

   

   On the next screen, click and Download the child theme to your computer (it’s a zip file).

   

4. Once downloading our freshly made child theme, we will need to upload it to our website.

   To do that, log in to your WordPress dashboard, navigate to Appearance -> Themes and click on the Add new button at the top.

   

   Click on the Upload theme button and then Choose File on the next screen. Choose the zip file that you’ve just created and click Install Now. Once the installation has been complited, click on activate to start using the child theme.

   
5. Once activating the child theme, visit your website and see that nothing changed (it’s a good thing). From now on, any changes that need to apply to your website, whether it’s design-wise or codes, need to be devoted to the child theme.

Additional online child theme generators

• Divi Cake
• Marmite
• Astra
• Page builder framework
• Elegant marketplace
• Beaver builder

Method #2: Create a Child Theme With a Plugin

We will create our child theme with a WordPress plugin in this method.

Install the Child Themify plugin

From your WordPress dashboard, navigate to Plugins -> Add new, search, install and activate the Child Themify plugin.

Create the child theme

Once installing the Child Themify plugin, a new option was added to your Appearance menu. Click on Create Child Theme.

On this screen, choose your parent theme from the drop-down menu and enter a child theme name, like your parent theme plus dash child added to the end—for example, oceanwp-child.

Click on the Create Child Theme button.

Once clicking the Create Child Theme button, you’ll get a message notifying you that the child theme was created successfully. You can click on the Go check it out button or navigate to Appearance -> Themes.

You’ll see the new child theme on the Themes screen that you’ve just created. Please hover your mouse on it and click activate.

Once activating the child theme, visit your website and see that nothing changed (it’s a good thing).

Moving forward, any changes that need to apply to your website, whether it’s design-wise or codes, need to be used in the child theme.

Conclusion

In this article, you learned how essential child themes are, why we need them, and how to create them.

Leave us a comment and let us know which methods you used. In addition, if you have any difficulties in creating it, let us know which theme you’re using, and we will make it for you.

The post How To Create a WordPress Child Theme Without Coding appeared first on PluginsForWP.

In this tutorial, I am going to show all possible ways on how to find out which theme and plugins a website using.

The methods below will show you what are the theme and the plugins that each website is using. It will shine a light and give you a better clue how the websites were built and how they function.

That way, you’ll be able to get many ideas and implement them on your website.

We will use 3 different ways to detect which theme and plugins a WordPress website is using:

• Using detecting websites.
• Inspecting the desired website source code.
• Using chrome extension.

Feel free to choose the right method for you. Let’s start with the first way:

Detect with an Online Website

There are many online websites that will detect it for you and I will list many of them down below. However, for this tutorial, I would like to focus on one of them.

Navigate to wpthemedetector and enter the website that you’d like to detect and click Experience the magic of WPTD!.

It will take about a minute to process the entered URL information and will generate a report of the theme and plugins that the entered website is using.

After running the report on us, PluginsForWP for example, it detected that we are using the oceanwp theme and also several plugins, such as EDD to run our eCommerce store.

Now it’s your turn to detect your desired website and find out which theme and plugins they are using.

The website above is only one site out of many that you can use. Here are many more websites that will do the same:

• https://gochyu.com
• https://scanwp.net
• https://isitwp.com
• https://makeawebsitehub.com/theme-detector
• https://shopthemedetector.com
• https://smallseotools.com/wordpress-theme-detector
• https://sitechecker.pro/wordpress-theme-checker
• https://theseotools.net/wp-theme-detector

Feel free to search for the theme and plugins you discovered online or check our library to see if we redistribute it for a better price.

The Page Source Code Method

The title above may sound complicated but it’s not at all. I will show and direct you step by step how to manually find out which theme a website is using with the source code method.

The first step is to navigate to your desired website. We will take ourselves for example.

Navigate to the PluginsForWP homepage. Right-click anywhere on the homepage and click on ‘View Page Source’.

The page source code may look scary but we don’t need to deal with it, we just need to find one specific line.

Click on ‘CTRL + F‘ (for Windows) or ‘COMMAND + F‘ (for Macs) and search for ‘style.css‘.

The result will reveal the used theme in the file URL address as shown in the image below.

You can also click on the CSS link to open it in a new tab. By doing so, you’ll be able to gain more information regarding the used theme, such as the theme URL address and some developer details.

Look for the Theme Name at the top part of the stylesheet. It should look something like that:

Feel free to search for the theme you discovered online or check our theme library to see if we redistribute it for a better price.

If this method looks too advanced for you (try it anyway), try our last method below.

Use a Chrome Extension

The last method that I would like to show you may be the easiest and most accessible one.

Why? because you only need to install the browser extension once and you can get the results immediately without inspecting it yourself or navigate to another website to do it.

Just like in the first method above, there are multiple extensions that we can use to detect the theme and plugins, however, I would like to focus on only one of them.

Using your Chrome browser, navigate to WordPress Theme Detector and Plugin Detector extension and click on Add to Chrome and on Add Extension.

After the installation, the extension was added to your chrome browser and a small WordPress icon was added on the right side next to the URL address.

Navigate to the website that you would like to inspect for theme and plugins and click on the WordPress icon.

Let’s take us for example once again, clicking on the new icon will instantly get the information on which theme and plugins we are using.

The result showing that we are using a child theme. If your website doesn’t have one, read our article and learn how to create a child theme.

Again, after finding your desired information, feel free to look for the plugins and themes online or browse our library to get them all at an affordable price.

Conclusion

In this article, you learned how to detect and find which theme and plugins a website is using.

Leave us a comment and let us know which one of the methods you chose to use.

The post How to Detect Which Theme and Plugins a WordPress Website is Using appeared first on PluginsForWP.