Set Up Featured Downloads

The Featured Downloads functionality for Easy Digital Downloads allows you to mark specific Downloads as “featured” and then display them on your site through the EDD Products block, a shortcode, or template tag.

This documentation covers how to use the feature and its various settings.

Setting Products as Featured

After you have installed and activated the Easy Digital Downloads extension, you can find the option to make a digital product/download “featured” by navigating to Downloads → All Downloads, then either:

• Creating a new product (Add Download)
• Editing an existing one

On the download product page, scroll down to Download Details → Details beneath the editor. 

Toggle the Feature this download in the store option. Save your changes. 

Repeat this for each digital product you wish to include as a featured download.

At a glance, you’ll be able to see which of your downloads are ‘featured’ on your website from the main Downloads list.

Displaying Featured Downloads 

Once you’ve added all of the Downloads you want, the best way to display them on your site is with the EDD Products block. This customizable block is used to display your products in rows and columns.

Navigate to the section of your WordPress website where you want to show the featured downloads, such as a product, shop, or checkout page.

Within the editor, click the + icon, then search and select the “EDD Products” block. 

In the right-hand settings panel, go to Product Block Settings. 

The Featured Downloads drop-down menu has three options:

• Show All Downloads 
• Show Only Featured Downloads
• Show Featured Downloads First

Select whichever option best suits your needs. For example, if you’re creating your main online shop page and want to include all products, including featured and non-featured, you would select Show All Downloads.

But if you’re adding a section elsewhere meant strictly for showcasing a few specific products, you’d choose Show Only Featured Downloads. 

Save/Publish your changes.

Customizing the Featured Downloads Styling

Important: While Featured Downloads is available to all Easy Digital Downloads users, only EDD Pro users can customize the styling. Learn how to upgrade from EDD Lite to Pro. 

Within the EDD Products Block settings, there’s another option to Enable Featured Styling. 

Once you turn this setting on, scroll down to Featured Downloads Styling.

Show Featured Badge

When enabled, this setting adds a badge to your featured downloads. You can add custom text to appear on the badge or leave it with the default ‘Featured’.

You can also customize the badge background and text colors. 

Enable Featured Border

This option lets you add and style a border around your featured downloads. 

Customize the border color, width, and radius.

You can also choose from the four Border Styles.

• Solid
• Dashed
• Double
• Dotted

Remember to Save/Publish any changes. 

Additional Settings & Options

The Products block is the fastest and easiest way to add and customize Featured Downloads on your Easy Digital Downloads store.

However, you can also display them via shortcode or template tag. 

Shortcode

Add the featured attribute to the existing [downloads] shortcode provided by Easy Digital Downloads. This will display a list of all Featured Downloads.

[downloads featured="yes"]

Once you’ve added all of the Downloads you want, there are two ways that you can display the Featured Downloads on your site.

Template Tag

If you’re comfortable adding custom code to your theme, the following code can be used anywhere in your theme’s files to show the Featured Downloads. Typical usage would be in single.php, page.php, or in conjunction with a conditional statement used in functions.php.

if( function_exists( 'edd_fd_show_featured_downloads') ) { edd_fd_show_featured_downloads(); }

Once in place, the featured downloads will be displayed on the page you’ve added either the shortcode or template tag to.

Changing Featured Product Order

If you’re using the EDD Products block, you can control how products are ordered under the block settings panel to the right.

The Order By options include: Date Published, Title, Date, ID, etc. You can also choose Ascending or Descending. 

If you are using the shortcode option, featured products are ordered based on your ordering settings for the shortcode. To learn more about how products are ordered when using the [downloads] shortcode in Easy Digital Downloads, view the full document for the shortcode. 

If you are using the custom code example above, they will be ordered based on the date the product was published.