How to Track WordPress Media Files Access

PDA Statistics extension allows you to track relevant statistics of your protected files in terms of users, clicks, and expiry date.

Requirements:

View your stats

Once activating our plugins, navigate to Prevent Direct Access Gold >> Statistics from your admin dashboard.

Then you can view the following statistics:

Protected Files Access

This table lets you know who has accessed your files via both protected links and private download links, and how many times they’ve done so.

Simply click on the “arrow” button to see the detailed information.

What’s more, you can also group data based on users as well as exporting them into CSV file.

It’s important to know that while you can track access to most file types, we do not track images access at the moment. After being embedded into the content, the images will load immediately no matter if you have clicked on them or not.

Show Protected Files Access by default

To display this table by default, simply add the following code snippet to your (child) theme’s functions.php file.

add_filter('pda_stats_default_chart', function() {
 return 'user_click_link';
});

When it comes into private download links, you can see some useful statistics such as which private links generate most clicks or where your customers come from or the browsers they use. As a result, you’ll understand which products and campaigns perform better.

The statistics include:

  • Top Download Links with Most Clicks: displays top private download links that most people click on.
  • Top Files with Most Download Clicks: shows top WordPress files whose private download links generate the most clicks.
  • Top Files with Most Download Links: displays top WordPress files that have the most private download links.
  • Top Countries with Most Download Clicks: lists top countries from where your private links are accessed most (restricted to 1,000 API calls monthly).
  • Top Browsers with Most Download Clicks: displays top browsers that most people use to access your private download links.
  • Top Going-to-expire Download Links: lists top private download links that are going to expire and their expiry date.
  • Hotlinked Images: lets you know which images are being hotlinked from other domains if any.

You can view all these statistics in 3 different formats, namely list, bar, and doughnut chart view.

A few things are worth noting:

  • We don’t show private links created by the other plugins including:
    • Password Protect WordPress Pro
    • Shortcode to generate private links
    • PDA Protect Videos extension
    • PDA PayPal Integration extension
    • PDA Campaign Monitor Integration extension
  • We display active and inactive private download links only, except in Top 10 going-to-expire Private Download Links table.
  • If a file is deleted, its data will be removed from Private Download Links statistics table.
Lasted updated on May 6, 2021