Blog, PHP, WordPress, WordPress Plugins, WordPress Shortcode

Display the Number of Total WordPress Downloads

This article will show you how to retrieve the total WordPress download count and display it in a WP post or page with shortcode. Of all the excellent resources and APIs that WordPress makes available to their community, I couldn't find one that returned a total count. Some time back we had a need for it, so we wrote a quick function that would scrape the WordPress website and cache the result. While a regular expression is never a good idea for parsing HTML content - it works (until it doesn't, of course).

The Result

The result will display the download count for the current version as extracted from this page on the WordPress website. The shortcode of [wpdl] will return the following: . Made to look a little more interesting:

If you're in the business of supporting WordPress in any way, it might come in handy.

WordPress Shortcode

Copy and paste the WordPress function into your theme's functions.php file or, if you sensibly have one installed, your custom functions plugin. You may optionally download and install our plugin from the bottom of of the page.

<?php

Display the Number of Total WordPress Downloads

http://www.beliefmedia.com/wordpress-download-count

function beliefmedia_wp_download_count($atts) {

$atts = shortcode_atts(array(

'cache_temp' => 600,

'cache' => 7200

), $atts);

$transient = 'wpdl_' . md5(serialize($atts));

$count = get_transient($transient);

if ($count !== false) {

return $count;

} else {

$text = @file_get_contents('http://wordpress.org/download/counter/');

if ($text !== false) {

$pattern = "/<span id=\"numnumnum\">(.*?)<\/span>/s";

preg_match($pattern, $text, $m);

$count = $m[1];

/* Set transient */

set_transient($transient, $count, $atts['cache']);

} else {

$count = 'Unavailable';

/* Set temp transient */

set_transient($transient, $count, $atts['cache_temp']);

}

return $count;

}

add_shortcode('wpdl','beliefmedia_wp_download_count');

If you require shortcode to work in a sidebar widget, you'll have to enable the functionality with a filter. If you're using our custom functions plugin, you'll have that feature enabled by default.

PHP Function

Used outside of WordPress, the following may be used. Usage requires Simple Cache.

<?php

Display the Number of Total WordPress Downloads

http://www.beliefmedia.com/wordpress-download-count

function beliefmedia_wp_download_count() {

$atts = array(

'cache_temp' => 600,

'cache' => 7200

);

$transient = 'wpdl_count_' . md5(serialize($atts));

$count = beliefmedia_get_transient($transient, $atts['cache']);

if ($count !== false) {

return $count;

} else {

$text = @file_get_contents('http://wordpress.org/download/counter/');

if ($text !== false) {

$pattern = "/<span id=\"numnumnum\">(.*?)<\/span>/s";

preg_match($pattern, $text, $m);

$count = $m[1];

/* Set transient */

beliefmedia_set_transient($transient, $count);

} else {

$count = beliefmedia_get_transient_data($transient);

}

return $count;

}

/* Usage */

echo beliefmedia_wp_download_count();

Download

Title: Display the Number of Total WordPress Downloads (WP Plugin)
Description: Displays a total count of WordPress downloads. Sourced from the WP website.
Download • Version 0.2, 1.5K, zip, Category: WordPress Plugins (General)
WordPress Shortcodes, (649.0B) PHP Code & Snippets, (657.0B)

Download our 650-page guide on Finance Marketing. We'll show you exactly how we generate Billions in volume for our clients.