How to Configure Easy Digital Downloads – WordPress
Do you want to sell digital products, services, or any downloadable items from your website? If you do, Easy Digital Downloads will be the best option for you.
This fully featured plugin comes with all the necessary options to help you set up and manage a digital store. In today’s post, I will show you how to configure this plugin on your site.
First of all, install and activate the plugin. Once you do that, you will notice a new menu item titled “Downloads” in your dashboard menu. Now you are ready to start using the plugin.
Adding a New Product
To add a new downloadable product, go to Downloads > Add New. You will be taken to a page like the following –
The first two fields allow you to provide the name and description of the downloadable product. Next, you can set up the download price. You can provide a fixed price or enable variable pricing.
You can define the product type in “Download Files.” Easy Digital Downloads (EDD) supports two types of products –
- Single products and
- Bundled products.
While the single product is self-explanatory, bundled products enable you to combine multiple products into a package and create a bundled package.
Below, you will find two options to provide the file name and URL for your product. It is also possible to upload a new file and attach it here.
Then, in “Download Notes,” you can provide a link to your online user manual, special instructions, or anything else you need to tell the customer. This note will be added to the purchase receipt.
There are some more options on the right sidebar. First of all, “Download Stats” will show the number of sales and the total earning from this product. Then, you have the usual publishing, category, and tag sections.
In “Download Settings,” you can choose how many times a customer can download this product. You will also find a purchase shortcode to show a buy button for this button in any location you want.
Finally, “Download Image” allows you to choose a featured image for the product.
Once you have provided all the necessary information, click “Publish.” This will add the product to your store.
You can view all of your downloads from the Downloads > All Downloads page. The page allows you to edit, delete, or view the downloadable products you have added.
Adding a Discount Code
EDD comes fully equipped with built-in options to let you offer coupons and special discounts for the customers. To add a new coupon, go to Downloads > Discount Codes. This will take you to a page like the following –
First of all, you have to provide the name for the coupon. Then, you can define the coupon code and type. You can choose the discount to be a fixed amount or a percentage of the total price.
If you want to offer the discount only on specific products, you can choose those products in the “Download Requirements” field. And in case you want to exclude certain products from the discount, you can do that in the “Excluded Downloads” field.
Next, there are some more fields to set up the start and finish date for the coupon, the minimum amount of expense to enjoy the coupon, how many times this coupon code could be used, and limit the discount once per customers.
Once you set up the rules, click “Add Discount Code.” This will add the discount code. Repeat these steps to create another coupon code. You can manage all of your coupons by going to the Downloads > Discount Codes page.
Setting up Easy Digital Downloads
You will find the settings options for EDD in the Downloads > Settings page. The page looks like the following –
As you can see, the settings options are divided into several tabs. Let’s go through the tabs quickly.
General
The plugin will automatically create and assign the pages for checkout, purchase confirmation, failed transaction, and purchase history. You can check out the pages in the “General” tab. Below, you can define the base country and state/province of your store.
In “Currency,” you can choose the base currency, currency position, thousands separator, and the decimal separator for your store.
Payment Gateways
As you can guess, this tab allows you to select which payment gateways you want to use in your store. EDD comes with PayPal Standard and Amazon in the free version. You can purchase more payment gateways from the extension store.
Emails
Here, you can provide the logo, and define the sender name and email address for the email notifications. It is also possible to customize the email messages for purchase receipt and new sale notifications.
Styles
Here, you will find an option titled “Disable Styles” to disable the default styling. You need to use this if your theme comes with a dedicated styling for EDD. Below, there are two more options to choose the default button style and color.
Taxes
This tab allows you to enable taxes for your online store. You can specify the tax rates for various countries and cities. You will also find options to display the prices with or without the tax, show the tax during checkout, etc.
Misc
There are several settings options available in this tab. Among these, “Checkout” enables you to force SSL on checkout, require the customers to login before purchasing, allow the customer to use multiple discounts, etc.
“Button Text” allows you to customize the text for various events like purchase completed, add to cart, buy now, etc. In “File Downloads,” you can set how many times the customers can download their purchased products, expiry time for the download link sent to the customer, and to disable re-download.
Other EDD Options
There are some other EDD options available as well. Among these, you can manage the categories, tags, and customers by checking out their respective pages.
You will find detailed reports about your store performance on the Downloads > Reports page. You can check out the total earnings or earning by category for today, yesterday, this week, month, quarter, year, or the previous week, month, quarter, year, etc. It is also possible to track the number of download per items, the taxes, and so on.
There are some handy tools available on the Downloads > Tools page. For instance, you can specify the addresses that are banned from making purchases on your store, reset various store stats, etc. It is also possible to import or export the store settings.
Final Words
As you can see, EDD makes it a lot easier to create an online store for selling digital products. Now that you have read this step-by-step tutorial, you should be more confident in doing this on your site. Let me know if you need any more help.
