Jeff Starr

Simple Download Counter (SDC) provides a simple yet powerful way to count file downloads. Works with any file type that’s supported by WordPress (e.g., JPG, PNG, ZIP, MP4, TXT, and many more).
Important / Please Read
This plugin enables Admin-level users to add download files of any type, from anywhere on the server, or from any remote public location. Only Administrators are allowed to add download files. Please use caution and use responsibly.
<blockquote>
This plugin is incompatible with WordPress Multisite.
</blockquote>
How it works
Visit the plugin settings to add a download file. Then use the shortcode to display a download link on any post or page. The plugin will then count every download and display it in the plugin settings. You can also display the download count on the front end using a shortcode.
Features
<ul>
<li>Simple and powerful download counter</li>
<li>Supports local and remote file URLs</li>
<li>Supports any file type supported by WordPress</li>
<li>Lightweight – entire plugin size is < 160 KB</li>
<li>Super fast and built for optimal performance</li>
<li>Clean code tightly integrated with WordPress</li>
<li>No Apache/.htaccess required</li>
</ul>
Check out the screenshots below to get a better idea of the plugin settings and more.
How is this better?
There are numerous “download counter” or “download manager” plugins available, but none of them satisfy all of my specific, stringent requirements:
<ul>
<li>Current with latest WordPress</li>
<li>Clean and simple code using WP APIs</li>
<li>Lightweight with minimal useless features</li>
<li>Supports all local and remote downloads</li>
<li>No automatically created posts or pages</li>
<li>No advertisements or weird admin notifications</li>
<li>No obtuse styling of default WP Admin elements</li>
<li>Download posts are visible only in the Admin Area</li>
<li>Descriptive error handling for upload files</li>
<li>No redundant or sloppy coding practices</li>
<li>No requirement for cookies or sessions</li>
<li>No requirement for Apache/.htaccess</li>
<li>No weird database shenanigans</li>
</ul>
So I decided to build my own. Let me emphasize the utter simplicity of this plugin. It does one thing and does it well: counts the number of downloads for your files. And makes it easy to display download links and download counts anywhere on the front end.
Privacy
This plugin does not collect or store any user data. It does not set any cookies, and it does not connect to any third-party locations. The only thing this plugin does is count the number of times files are downloaded. So 100% privacy friendly for everyone.
Simple Download Counter is developed and maintained by <a href="https://x.com/perishable" rel="nofollow ugc">Jeff Starr</a>, 15-year <a href="https://plugin-planet.com/" rel="nofollow ugc">WordPress developer</a> and <a href="https://books.perishablepress.com/" rel="nofollow ugc">book author</a>.

Simple Download Counter

Thanks a lot for this great Plugin. 
It does exactly what it is supposed to do, simply count how often a file is downloaded. And the plugin is very lightweight. The additional options in connection with the shortcode leave nothing to be desired.

Simply a great Plugin

Simply counts the number of times your files are downloaded. Display download links and counts using shortcodes.

r-win

Since WordPress does offer attaching downloads to pages, but doesn’t keep track of statistical information about these downloads, I wrote this plugin. 
I should mention statistical information is a big word for just another download counter, since that is main purpose of this plugin.
Features:
<ul>
<li>Keeps track of the amount of downloads of a certain file.</li>
<li>Keeps track of the last download time</li>
<li>Allows you to reset the counter</li>
<li>Allows you to add counters to both internal and external urls</li>
<li>Can use fancy urls (like /downloads/file.zip)</li>
<li>Can print the amount of downloads, the filesize and the last modified date in a post.</li>
</ul>
<h3>Arbitrary section</h3>
Using tags in your posts
When writing a post or a page, you may want to add the URL or the amount of downloads in your post. Using [ download(downloadname) ] (without the spaces) will be replaced with the download url, [ downloadcounter(downloadname) ] will be replaced with the amount of downloads, [ downloadsize(downloadname) ] will print the size of the download (in GB, MB, kB or B), [ downloadupdated(downloadname) ] will print the last modified date, using the WordPress setting you’ve specified for the date format. When creating a link, you could, for instance, use <a href="[ download(file.zip) ]" rel="nofollow ugc">Download</a> (of course, again, without the spaces within the [] brackets).
Finally, when using downloadsize of downloadupdated, you can specify one extra argument. With downloadsize, you can add ,false to prevent the usage of the GB, MB, kB or B postfixes. So, for example, using [ downloadsize(file.zip, false) ] will just display the size in bytes. With downloadupdated, you can enter a PHP date format string as extra argument. For example, [ downloadupdated(file.zip, d-m-Y) ] will display a date like 27-11-2008.
Retrieving download information from PHP
Since version 0.6 is it possible to get information about the downloads using PHP, so you can use this information directly in your templates or in you own plugins. Only one function is important at the moment:
<pre><code>download_information($download_name, $return_information = DOWNLOAD_URL | DOWNLOAD_AMOUNT)
</code></pre>
This function will return an array with the requested information. You can specify what information to return by the argument $return_information. The file downloadcounter-options.php contains the correct define statements which can be used. Currently only URL, Amount, Size and Last Modified Date are available.
Using the code
<pre><code>$info = download_information(wp-downloadcounter.zip, DOWNLOAD_URL | DOWNLOAD_AMOUNT | DOWNLOAD_SIZE | DOWNLOAD_LASTMODIFIED);
var_dump($info);
</code></pre>
returns:
<pre><code>array(4) { ["url"]=> string(73) "http://projects.bovendeur.org/downloads/wp-downloadcounter.zip" ["amount"]=> string(4) "1878" ["size"]=> int(11006) ["lastmodified"]=> int(1228157426) }
</code></pre>

WP-DownloadCounter

Since WordPress does offer attaching downloads to pages, but doesn't keep track of the amount of downloads, this plugin was written.

Simple Download Counter vs WP-DownloadCounter