The Email Lock extension for Download Monitor allows you to require users to enter their email addresses before they gain access to a download.
Installation
- Unzip and upload the plugin’s folder to your /wp-content/plugins/ directory
- Activate the extension through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress
For more information on installing and managing plugins see here.
Usage
After installing the extension head over to the download you wish to lock with an email address form.
Lock the download
Edit the download you wish to lock and check the ‘Email Lock’ checkbox in the ‘Download Options’ meta box. Don’t forget to save/update the download after you’ve checked the option.
Insert the unlock download form shortcode
The Email Lock extension comes with a new shortcode that will display the Email Lock form and will display a download link to the file after the form has been successfully. You need to pass your download ID to this shortcode, we used download ID 5 in our example.
Example: [dlm_email_lock id=5]
Unlocking via the No Access page
Instead of displaying the unlock form on your page, you can also display the default download link by using the [download] shortcode. When the visitor clicks the link, Download Monitor will check if the user has already unlocked the download. If they didn’t yet, a No Access page will be displayed. The Email Lock extension automatically appends the unlocking form to the No Access page so your visitor can unlock the download there.
Example: [download id=5]
Because you use the default [download] shortcode, you can use all of the shortcode’s attributes like output templates!
Managing entered email address
Entered email addresses are attached to the download. A new meta box called ‘Email Addresses’ will be attached to each download that is locked with the Email Lock extension. In this list, you can remove email addresses and export them all to a CSV file. You can then import that CSV file in your mail client of choice.
Customer Usage
If you’ve followed the above steps in the Usage section your download is ready to go. Visitors will have to enter their email addresses prior gaining access to the download.
MX Record Lookup
MX records are used so you can have an active mailing service on a domain. Our implementation verifies if those records exist in the user’s email domain. In other words we want to minimize the chance that someone may download a file using a fake email address (that does not exist) like this one for example: records@domains.com.
If you want to find out more about MX Records please go here.
FAQ
Is the email address validated?
Yes, it is. The email address is validated by the browser (when supported) because it’s a native HTML5 email field. On top of that the email address is validated with JavaScript client-side and with PHP server-side.
Will mobile devices show the correct keyboard with the generated Email Lock form?
It will. The Email Lock extension generates a native HTML5 email field enabling mobile devices to display the correct keyboard.
I want to change the HTML structure of the generated form, is this possible?
It is. We realize that even when for most people the default HTML structure is great, you might want to have your custom template.
To overwrite the Email Lock template part add a file named download-email-lock.php to your-theme/download-monitor/. You can find (and use) the default Email Lock template located in plugins/dlm-email-lock/templates/download-email-lock.php.
Please note that if the required form field is not submitted the extension can’t give your visitors access to the download.