File Download Event not firing

  • Resolved dmacdonald

    (@dmacdonald)


    7 years, 7 months ago

    I am running the latest version of WordPress, 4.7.3 and use the “Download Manager” plugin to support pdf downloads from my website (version 4.6.3).
    I have downloaded and activated MonsterInsights today (version 6.1.7) and see that some Events are firing and showing up in GA but others are not e.g.:
    Event Category “outbound-link” appears to be working fine and shows up in GA. However when I download a file from my website, no event appears to be generated.

    Note: under Insights->Settings->Tracking, I have specified ‘Track downloads as an: Event’ and extension of files to track includes .pdf.
    Is there some conflict between the “Download Manager” and MonsterInsights that is preventing the download event from being created?

Viewing 9 replies - 1 through 9 (of 9 total)
  • Plugin Author chriscct7

    (@chriscct7)

    What’s the URL of the file that Download Manager is using?

    -Chris

    Thread Starter dmacdonald

    (@dmacdonald)

    Hi Chris. By way of example, one of my download pages is here:
    https://investment-solutions.com/download/201704-thinking-ahead-icppi-article/

    At bottom of page, user can click on either of the ‘Download’ buttons (both do the same since a single pdf download; 2 separate download buttons exist to facilitate single file download or all file download for a package of files). Clicking on these download buttons does not generate an Event: I’ve monitored in both GA Real-Time and under GA Behaviour->Events->Overview (with date range to include today).

    Thread Starter dmacdonald

    (@dmacdonald)

    Hi Chris. Just wondering if you’d had any further thoughts on this issue and why any Downloads are not being picked up by MonsterInsights and corresponding Event sent to GA?

    It may be that I am misunderstanding how the Download Event is detected by MonsterInsights but would be good to have some guidance here.

    thanks,
    David

    yhdm

    (@yellowhousedesign)

    I’ve noticed the same issue without using a plugin.

    In my case, I added a link to download a PDF directly in the post content via the WYSIWYG editor which linked to a PDF file in the media library.

    I’m logged in to check real-time GA events and it is not showing up.

    Plugin Author chriscct7

    (@chriscct7)

    Hi there,
    For some reason my reply didn’t post. The reason it doesn’t work with that plugin is it’s obfuscating the links so that they no longer contain the file extension which we have to parse to determine the file type to track as

    -Chris

    Thread Starter dmacdonald

    (@dmacdonald)

    Thanks for your response Chris. Is there anyway to get around this? Clearly WP Download Manager is one of the dominant download plugins for WordPress so it’s a real shame if MonsterInsights is unable to detect any downloads generated via this plugin.

    The WP Download Manager plugin also allows you to change the setup so that the download file opens up within the browser page but this doesn’t appear to generate the Event either.

    Any thoughts appreciated!
    thanks, David

    Thread Starter dmacdonald

    (@dmacdonald)

    Sorry, further thought to add: where it says ‘Download’ on https://investment-solutions.com/featured-insights/, it is possible to change this text to something else e.g. “Download.pdf” – would this help the parsing to pick up the download event?
    David

    Plugin Author chriscct7

    (@chriscct7)

    Hi there,
    We parse the href attribute of the link to determine if the link is a download link, so the link itself would need to link to a download.pdf.

    Chris

    Thread Starter dmacdonald

    (@dmacdonald)

    Ok, understood Chris. Thanks for all your responses on this.
    Regards,
    David

Viewing 9 replies - 1 through 9 (of 9 total)
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