Descrición
I-Soft File Manager: Foundation is a modular download manager built for modern WordPress.
Unlike standard media plugins that dump every upload into a single dated folder, Foundation is designed for municipalities, universities, libraries, and any team that needs to manage thousands of public documents, maintain a strict category tree, and give different departments their own secure upload spaces.
Key features
- True folder organization. Every category you create maps 1:1 to a real folder on disk under
wp-content/uploads/isoft-fmf-files/. Rename a category and the folder renames itself; every file path in the database updates instantly. - Department-level access control. Restrict editors to specific categories so HR uploads only land in the HR folder, IT uploads only in the IT folder, and so on. Restricted users cannot see drafts from other departments either.
- External file sync and “From Folder” browser. Because categories are real folders, drop files into them via SFTP, rclone, or any external sync tool. The From Folder browser detects untracked files instantly so you can link them to a download with one click.
- One-click multi-file downloads. Upload multiple files to a single entry via drag-and-drop. Visitors can grab individual files or everything at once as an automatically generated ZIP bundle.
- Built-in analytics and audit log. Statistics dashboard tracks per-file and aggregate counts, recalculates HOT badges nightly, and the optional audit log records timestamps, IP addresses, and user agents with configurable retention.
- Secure download handler. Files live behind an
.htaccess-protected directory; every download routes through PHP with nonce verification, role checks, rate limiting, and hotlink protection. X-Sendfile and X-Accel-Redirect supported for high-traffic hosts. - Cyrillic transliteration. Uploaded filenames and category slugs are automatically transliterated from Serbian Cyrillic to Latin for safe disk storage; display titles keep their original characters.
- Native builder support. Gutenberg blocks ship out of the box. Eight shortcodes work in Elementor, WPBakery, Divi, Beaver Builder, and Bricks — see the full shortcode reference below.
- Themeable via CSS variables. Recolor every card, badge, and icon from Appearance Customize Additional CSS without writing complex selectors — see customizing appearance below.
Architecture in one line
The filesystem is the source of truth. Moving a download to a different category auto-moves its files on disk; deleting a category is blocked if any download still references it. This is what lets external automation tools sync files in and out without having to understand WordPress internals.
Extensions (coming soon)
- I-Soft File Manager: Sentinel — server-side automation. Monitors category folders for new files, creates draft download entries, and supports rclone mirroring, SFTP bulk upload, and scheduled folder scans.
- I-Soft File Manager: Orbit — Google Shared Drive sync. Departments drop files into shared folders; Orbit imports them as drafts for review.
- I-Soft File Manager: Arbiter — one-shot importer from jDownloads. Rebuilds your categories, downloads, files, and counters in Foundation, preserving slug paths so existing URLs keep working.
Shortcodes
Foundation ships eight shortcodes. Drop them in any classic-editor page, any Gutenberg “Shortcode” block, or any builder’s HTML / Shortcode widget. Every category and tag attribute accepts either the term slug (preferred — stable across exports) or its numeric term ID. Slugs are visible on the Downloads Categories screen and as the chip next to the category name on the download edit screen.
[isoft_fmf_list] — filtered list of downloads
Renders a grid, list, or table of downloads. Same renderer as the Download List block.
Attribute
Default
What
category
empty
slug or term ID; empty = all categories
include_subcategories
"1"
also include downloads in descendant categories; "0" restricts to the exact category
tag
empty
slug or term ID
limit
per-page setting
how many to render
orderby
"date"
date / title / download_count / any WP_Query orderby
order
"DESC"
ASC / DESC
layout
display setting
grid / list / table
show_search
"0"
render a search box scoped to the same category
Common recipes:
[isoft_fmf_list category="resolutions"]
[isoft_fmf_list category="resolutions" layout="grid" limit="12"]
[isoft_fmf_list category="resolutions" orderby="download_count"]
[isoft_fmf_list category="resolutions" show_search="1"]
[isoft_fmf_download id=”123″] — a single download card
Renders one download’s full card by post ID.
Attribute
Default
What
id
required
the download post ID
show_description
"1"
include the description below the title
show_files
"1"
render the per-file list with download buttons
style
"card"
card / compact / button-only
[isoft_fmf_categories] — category grid
Clickable cards leading to each category’s archive page. Same renderer as the Category Grid block.
Attribute
Default
What
parent
0
term ID of the parent category to show children of; 0 shows top-level
columns
3
grid columns
show_count
"1"
show the count of downloads per category
show_description
"1"
show the category description text
[isoft_fmf_search] — search box
Renders a search form that filters Foundation downloads.
Attribute
Default
What
category
empty
scope the search to a single category (slug or term ID)
placeholder
“Search downloads…”
the input placeholder text
[isoft_fmf_recent] — latest downloads
Pre-set list, newest first.
Attribute
Default
What
limit
5
how many to render
days
0
restrict to downloads posted in the last N days; 0 = no time limit
category
empty
scope to a single category
[isoft_fmf_popular] — most-downloaded
Pre-set list, ordered by download count.
Attribute
Default
What
limit
5
how many to render
period
"all"
all / 30d / 7d
category
empty
scope to a single category
[isoft_fmf_button file_id=”42″] — a single download button
Renders just a download button for one specific file (not the whole download post). Useful inline in body content.
Attribute
Default
What
file_id
required
the file ID (visible in the per-file list on the download edit screen)
text
“Download”
button label
class
empty
extra CSS classes appended to the button
[isoft_fmf_count] — download counter
Renders just a number — either a single file’s count or a whole download post’s total.
Attribute
Default
What
id
0
download post ID (uses the post’s aggregate counter)
file_id
0
specific file ID (uses that file’s counter)
format
"%s"
sprintf format string for the number, e.g. "%s downloads"
Exactly one of id or file_id should be set.
Builder widget reference
The shortcodes above drop into every major builder’s HTML or Shortcode widget. Where to paste:
Builder
Widget
Elementor
Widgets panel Shortcode
WPBakery
Add element Text Block (source view) or Raw HTML
Divi
Module Code
Beaver Builder
Basic Modules HTML
Bricks
Basic Elements Shortcode
Native, point-and-click widgets for each builder (with full attribute panels instead of writing shortcode strings) are planned as separate companion plugins.
Customizing appearance
I-Soft File Manager: Foundation exposes its styling via CSS custom properties on :root so you can recolor cards from Appearance Customize Additional CSS without writing any selectors.
Example — recolor the PDF icon to match your theme blue and soften card borders:
:root {
--isoft-fmf-icon-pdf-bg: #1a73e8;
--isoft-fmf-card-border: #ddd;
}
Available CSS variables
--isoft-fmf-card-bg— Card background--isoft-fmf-card-border— Card and grid borders--isoft-fmf-row-border— Per-file row separator--isoft-fmf-title-band-bg— Grid-mode title band background--isoft-fmf-meta-color— Date / size / count text--isoft-fmf-empty-color— “No files available” text--isoft-fmf-badge-hot-bg— HOT badge background--isoft-fmf-badge-hot-color— HOT badge text--isoft-fmf-icon-color— File-type icon/badge text--isoft-fmf-icon-pdf-bg— PDF file color--isoft-fmf-icon-doc-bg— DOC / DOCX color--isoft-fmf-icon-xls-bg— XLS / XLSX color--isoft-fmf-icon-ppt-bg— PPT / PPTX color--isoft-fmf-icon-zip-bg— Archive (ZIP / RAR / 7Z) color--isoft-fmf-icon-img-bg— Image color--isoft-fmf-icon-vid-bg— Video color--isoft-fmf-icon-aud-bg— Audio color--isoft-fmf-icon-file-bg— Generic / unknown file color
Targeting individual classes
For deeper changes (layout, spacing, typography), all public classes use the .isoft-fmf- prefix with BEM naming. Key entry points:
.isoft-fmf-download-card— Outer wrapper around one download.isoft-fmf-download-card__title— Multi-file card heading.isoft-fmf-file-item— Per-file row.isoft-fmf-file-item__icon— Large file-type tile (list mode only).isoft-fmf-file-item__title— File or download title link.isoft-fmf-file-item__meta— Date / size / count meta block.isoft-fmf-file-item__action— Action column (button or status label).isoft-fmf-download-btn— The action button (intentionally not theme-locked via CSS variables; targets WPwp-element-buttonso theme styling stays in control).isoft-fmf-meta--type— Inline file-type badge (grid mode only).isoft-fmf-badge--hot— HOT marker.isoft-fmf-grid— Grid wrapper (use.isoft-fmf-grid--cols-3etc. for per-column-count overrides).isoft-fmf-list-wrap— List wrapper.isoft-fmf-category-grid— Category grid wrapper
Source code
Full source — including the un-minified React/JSX for the three Gutenberg blocks — is hosted publicly at:
https://github.com/I-SOFT-Mionica/isoft-fm-foundation
The compiled block bundles shipped under blocks/build/ are produced from blocks/<block-name>/{index,edit}.js via @wordpress/scripts (webpack). To rebuild from a clean checkout:
npm install
npm run build
The build script reads webpack.config.js, compiles each block’s index.js entry, and writes blocks/build/<block-name>.js plus an <block-name>.asset.php dependency manifest. Running npm run start instead watches the sources and rebuilds on save during development.
Capturas
Blocks
Este plugin proporciona 3 bloques.
- Download Category Grid [iD] Display download categories as a grid.
- Download Entry [iD] Embed the full download card for a selected download entry.
- Download List [iD] Display a list of downloads, optionally filtered by category or tag.
Instalación
- Upload the
isoft-fm-foundationfolder to/wp-content/plugins/, or install via Plugins Add New Upload Plugin. - Activate through the Plugins menu.
- Visit I-Soft File Manager: Foundation Settings to configure storage, access roles, PDF thumbnails, and log retention.
- Create at least one Download Category — this is required before any file can be uploaded. Categories map directly to folder names under
wp-content/uploads/isoft-fmf-files/. - To restrict an editor to specific folders, edit their user profile (Users Edit User) and check the allowed categories under I-Soft File Manager: Foundation — Allowed Categories. Leave empty for no access. Administrators are always unrestricted.
Server requirements
- PHP 8.4 or higher
- WordPress 6.7 or higher
- MySQL 5.7+ or MariaDB 10.3+
- Apache with
mod_rewrite+mod_authz_core, or Nginx - Database user with
CREATE,ALTER,INDEX,REFERENCES, andDROPon the WordPress database (needed once on activation to create the plugin’s tables; common on locked-down shared hosts to be missing) - Imagick PHP extension for PDF thumbnails
Preguntas frecuentes
-
Why not just use the default WordPress Media Library?
-
The Media Library flattens everything into
wp-content/uploads/YYYY/MM/, which breaks predictable automation and makes category-based permissions impossible. Foundation keeps files organized by category — which is what large organizations actually need when managing thousands of documents. -
How does the Category-as-Folder architecture work?
-
Foundation stores files outside the Media Library in a predictable per-category folder tree (
wp-content/uploads/isoft-fmf-files/). The filesystem is the source of truth. Moving a download to a different category auto-moves its files on disk. This lets external automation tools (Rclone, SFTP, scheduled scans) sync files in and out without having to understand WordPress internals. -
Can I assign a download to multiple categories?
-
No — each download lives in exactly one category. Categories are physical folders on your server, and a file can only sit in one folder at a time (just like on your computer). If you need a document to appear under several groupings, use tags instead — those are intentionally many-to-many and don’t affect storage. Heads up on 0.11.0: WordPress’s standard category picker still shows checkboxes that let you pick multiple, but only the first one is actually honored. A patch coming right after this release replaces that picker with a proper single-select dropdown so the UI matches the underlying rule.
-
Can I migrate from jDownloads?
-
Yes — but via a separate companion plugin, I-Soft File Manager: Arbiter (coming soon). Foundation’s data model is intentionally close to jDownloads to make a one-shot import practical; Arbiter reads the legacy tables directly and rebuilds the category tree, downloads, files, and counters into Foundation, preserving slug paths so existing URLs keep working.
-
How do I restrict a user to only some categories?
-
Open their user profile (Users Edit User), scroll to I-Soft File Manager: Foundation — Allowed Categories, and check the boxes. Users inherit access to every descendant of a checked category. Administrators bypass all access checks.
-
What happens to downloads if I delete a category?
-
Deletion is blocked if any download is still assigned to that category — the files would otherwise be orphaned. Reassign or delete the downloads first, then delete the category.
-
What file types are allowed?
-
Configured under Settings General Allowed File Extensions. The default list covers common document, archive, image, audio, and video formats. Executables (
.exe,.sh,.bat) are not in the default list and should only be added if you know what you’re doing. -
Does it support Cyrillic or other non-Latin filenames?
-
Yes. Uploaded filenames and category slugs are automatically transliterated from Serbian Cyrillic to Latin for disk storage. Display titles keep the original characters. A setting under Settings General Cyrillic Titles can auto-fill download titles in Cyrillic from uploaded Latin filenames.
-
Does it work with Full Site Editing (block) themes?
-
Yes. The plugin detects FSE themes and injects the download card via the
the_contentfilter. Classic theme templates undertemplates/are used as a fallback. -
Does it work with Elementor, WPBakery, Divi, Beaver Builder, or Bricks?
-
Yes. Foundation ships eight shortcodes that drop into every major builder’s HTML or Shortcode widget. See the full shortcode reference below for attributes; the builder widget table at the end of that section shows which widget to paste into in each builder. Native, point-and-click widgets for each builder are planned as separate companion plugins.
-
The plugin installed but every upload fails with “Could not save file record.” What’s wrong?
-
Your WordPress database user almost certainly lacks the
CREATEprivilege, so the plugin’s tables never got created on activation. As of 0.10.19 every admin page shows the exact MySQL error plus a ready-to-pasteGRANTstatement to fix it; visit any plugin admin page to see the notice. On many cPanel hosts you’ll need to also re-add the user to the database via cPanel after granting in SQL — the literal-vs-wildcard underscore escaping bites here.
Comentarios
Non hai recensións para este plugin.
Colaboradores e desenvolvedores
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Rexistro de cambios
0.11.0
- New: category-level default license with file inheritance. Each category now has a “Default License” dropdown on its Add/Edit screen. Downloads in a category that have their License field set to “— Inherit from category —” pick up the category’s default automatically. Per-file overrides still win. Set Public Domain on your “Budget” and “Assembly decisions” categories, set CC BY-SA 4.0 on your “PR archive” — every file in each category inherits the right license without per-file fiddling.
- New: two more seeded licenses out of the box. Public Domain — Serbian Law (Art. 6 ЗАСП) for official municipal acts that are public domain by operation of law (different mechanism than CC0’s author-release PD). Creative Commons BY-SA 4.0 with the standard summary and URL. Both ship alongside the existing four defaults.
- New: “Restore seeded licenses” button on Downloads Licenses. Adds any default licenses missing from your install. Add-only — existing licenses with the same slug are never overwritten. Use this after a plugin update that ships new default licenses to pull them in with one click.
- New: download log now records which license governed each download. A new column on the download log preserves the legal trail. Even if you change a file’s license later, you can still answer “what license was on this file when User X downloaded it on date Y?” — important for Creative Commons compliance (CC licenses are irrevocable for already-distributed copies).
- New: license chip on download cards. When a download has a license set (or inherits one from its category), the title now appears as a chip in the meta row. If the license has a URL, the chip links out to the canonical source (creativecommons.org, etc.).
- Improved: lock icon on download cards now shows the required role (“Subscriber+”, “Editor+”, etc.) next to the icon, so visitors know what login level they’d need.
- Improved: license change warning. When you change a file’s license in the editor, a warning appears if anyone has already downloaded that file. Reminds you that Creative Commons and most permissive licenses are irrevocable for already-distributed copies — the change only affects new downloads.
- Heads up — known issue with a quick fix on the way. WordPress’s standard category picker on the post edit screen still lets you check multiple categories, but Foundation stores every file in exactly one folder on disk (categories are physical folders, not labels) — only the first checked category actually drives where the file lives. For now, please assign each download to a single category. The next patch swaps the picker for a proper single-select dropdown so this can’t happen by accident.
0.10.21
- Fixed: download cards no longer show a lock icon on publicly accessible files. Files set to “Inherit from category” whose categories had no access role configured were cascading correctly to the site-wide default (Public) — but the card was reading the literal “inherit” value when deciding whether to show the lock, so visitors saw a lock chip on files they could actually download without logging in. The card now reads the cascade-resolved role and only shows the lock when the visitor really does need to authenticate.
0.10.20
- HOT badge and Top Downloads panel now work on new and quiet sites. The HOT recalculation was looking at the last 7 days only — fine for busy sites but it left brand-new installs and low-traffic sites with an empty Top Downloads panel forever, because there simply wasn’t enough recent data. The cron now tries 7 days first, widens to 30 if that’s empty, and last-resort falls back to all-time download counts. The Top Downloads dashboard panel labels itself honestly so you can see when it’s showing all-time vs recent data.
- Fixed: the Top Downloads (Last 30 Days) panel was silently showing 8 days at most, because the daily aggregate table was being purged too aggressively. The retention is now 32 days, so the panel and the 30-day chart actually show 30 days of data.
0.10.19
- Database setup failures are now visible. When the plugin can’t create its required tables (usually because the WordPress database user lacks
CREATEprivilege — common on locked-down shared hosts), every admin page now shows a clear warning with the exact MySQL error and a ready-to-pasteGRANTstatement to fix it. Previously the install appeared to succeed but every upload silently failed with “Could not save file record” and the admin had no clue why. - More helpful upload and save errors. Failed file uploads now report the specific reason (file too large, server out of temp space, security plugin blocked it, etc.) instead of a generic “upload error.” Failed database saves include the underlying MySQL error so you can see whether a column is missing, the disk is full, or something else.
0.10.18
- New: External Link Target setting under Settings Display. Choose whether external-URL download buttons (Google Drive, Dropbox, etc.) open in a new tab or the same window. Defaults to new tab — the modern web convention and what visitors usually expect for off-site links. Local-file downloads are unaffected.
- Fixed: downloads failed to start on Nginx and similar hosts where auto-mode picked a serve method the server couldn’t actually fulfill. Auto-mode now safely streams via PHP; admins who have X-Sendfile or X-Accel-Redirect properly configured can opt in via Settings Security File Serving Method.
- Fixed: PHP-streamed downloads hung on hosts with output gzip, nested output buffers, or aggressive FastCGI buffering. The stream now drains every level of output buffering, disables on-the-fly compression, and pushes data in 8 KB chunks so the file starts arriving immediately instead of waiting for the whole response to assemble.
- Fixed: Cyrillic-titled downloads kept the locale’s auto-draft slug (for example
automatski-nacrtunder Serbian Latin,auto-draftunder English) instead of transliterating the title. User-customized slugs are still preserved as before. - Fixed: download links silently failed on themes using AJAX page navigation (djax, pjax, swup, hotwire-turbo, instantclick). Those libraries intercept every link click and try to swap the response into the page as HTML — which explodes when the response is a binary file. Download buttons now ship with the HTML5
downloadattribute and the plugin’s own click handler runs first so the theme can’t hijack the request.
0.10.17
- Smart ZIP bundle cache expiry. Bundle cache now expires on idle time (last access), not build age — so a bundle being downloaded daily no longer gets rebuilt on a schedule. A hard ceiling at 3× the configured duration guarantees an eventual refresh regardless.
0.10.13 — 0.10.16
- Faster statistics dashboard. Now reads from a daily aggregate table instead of scanning the full per-event log; refreshes immediately on every download instead of after a 5-minute cache.
- ZIP bundle self-cleanup. A daily sweep removes stale or orphaned bundles from disk; deleting a download immediately clears its cache. A “Clear bundle cache now” button covers manual cleanup.
- Broken-link recovery on Windows hosts. Renamed or moved files are now relinked via SHA-256 content matching, not just POSIX inode (Linux/POSIX still uses the faster inode path).
- Manual “Run integrity check now” button on the Broken Links screen, with overlap protection and auto-recovery if the scan crashes mid-flight.
- Realistic demo content that models a real document lifecycle (release-day spike, decay, weekend dampening) so first-impression screenshots look like a live site.
0.10.0 — 0.10.12
- Category-level access roles. Categories can declare their own minimum role (Public, Subscriber+, Editor+, etc.). Downloads can be set to inherit the strictest permission across their assigned categories.
- One-click ZIP bundles for multi-file downloads. Visitors can grab everything as a single archive; optional on-disk cache via Settings Display.
- Multi-file summary tiles. In listings, multi-file downloads now render as a single summary card (file count, distinct types, total size, single “Download all” button) instead of one row per file.
- User-agent blocklist under Settings Security for blocking specific scrapers or bots.
- Featured-first listings. Downloads marked Featured pin to the top of any list regardless of sort order.
- External-only flag for downloads where the external URL is canonical and the local file is just a backup.
- Plus a bundle of fixes for the Category Grid block and a settings-tab regression where saving one tab wiped checkboxes on the others.
0.8.0 — 0.9.1
- WordPress.org review preparation. Full Coding Standards compliance pass, escape and nonce audits, REST capability hardening, and the official rename to I-Soft File Manager: Foundation (slug
isoft-fm-foundation).
0.7.0 — 0.7.2
- Themeable via CSS custom properties. Every color in the public stylesheet is exposed as a
--isoft-fmf-*variable on:root— recolor anything by overriding a single variable in Customizer Additional CSS. - Demo content creates a showcase page automatically so new users can see all three embed patterns side-by-side.
0.5.0 — 0.6.1
- Rate limiting and hotlink protection fully enforced (configurable per IP/hour, configurable referer check).
- Lighter PDF thumbnail backend — Imagick-only; removed every
exec()call from the codebase.
0.4.0 — 0.4.9
- Broken-link recovery. Daily scheduled scan detects missing files. Visitors hitting a missing file see a friendly “temporarily unavailable” page instead of an error.
- Object cache layer for hot-path reads, and the Broken Links admin screen with per-row recovery options (Move back, Reassign, Split, Reupload, Detach).
- Container-query grid that adapts to any sidebar or column width.
0.3.0 — 0.3.9
- Per-user category access control with subtree inheritance.
- Grid view redesign with colored file-type badges and clean layout bands.
0.2.1 — 0.2.9
- Category-as-folder architecture introduced. Creating a category creates a real physical folder on the server.
- From Folder browser for files dropped in via external tools.
- Cyrillic-to-Latin transliteration for safe filesystem storage.
- Inline metadata editing directly from the file list.