FileDeck – Document Library & Download Manager

Changelog

2.99.0

• Translations now work alongside a wordpress.org language pack. A language pack for your language used to replace FileDeck’s bundled translations, and because a pack covers only the free plugin, Pro and AI tier text would have gone back to English. The pack now keeps priority for the strings it translates, and the bundled translations supply the rest.
• The Document Library” page FileDeck creates when it is first activated is titled in the site’s language when FileDeck has a translation for it.
• AI tier: the PDF watermark footer is translated. It is printed in plain ASCII, so accented letters become plain ones where the server can transliterate them; otherwise, and for languages such as Chinese, the footer stays in English.
• AI tier: the Smart Collections list shows when each collection was refreshed in the word order of your language (vor 3 Stunden”, il y a 3 heures”).
• Security and reliability improvements.

2.98.1

• The bundled translations now cover the Document Category” and Document Tag” names at the top of category and tag archive pages, the Documents menu’s own labels, and the Bricks document embed element’s settings and its prompt to pick a document.
• Pro: the This document has been superseded” notice, the Attached documents” heading, the empty document changelog message and the placeholder choice at the top of dropdown document fields on the front-end submission form now use the bundled translations. They stayed in English on translated sites before.
• AI tier: the read-and-confirm prompt with its button and confirmation messages, the Related documents” heading and the empty collection message now use the bundled translations too.
• Pro and AI tier: when the admin language is one of the nine, the Document Fields, Acknowledgments, Smart Collections and AI Index screens and the Supersede, Attached documents and Read & confirm boxes are translated as well. Other admin screens stay in English.

2.98.0

• Fixed: on a fresh install the setup wizard opened before the opt-in question could appear, and while that question stayed unanswered the Documents menu held only the question and screens such as Upload Documents and Settings said Sorry, you are not allowed to access this page.” The question now comes first, answering it (Allow or Skip) opens the setup wizard, and FileDeck works normally while it is still unanswered.
• Uninstalling FileDeck moves the auto-created Document Library” page to the trash when its title and content are still exactly as FileDeck created them, instead of leaving it published with a bare [filedeck] shortcode. It stays if it was edited, is the homepage, is in a menu or has child pages; on sites with the trash turned off it is set to draft.
• The deactivation form’s The plugin didn’t work”, The plugin broke my site” and The plugin suddenly stopped working” answers now offer an optional box for what happened, plus a link to tell us directly.
• The setup wizard’s browser tab now reads FileDeck Setup”.

2.97.0

• The library’s Copy link” button and its Copied!” confirmation, Load more”, the Previous, Next and page-number buttons, and the search palette’s label and messages now use the site’s translation. They stayed in English on translated sites before.
• A translation template, languages/filedeck.pot, ships with the plugin, so Loco Translate, Poedit and similar tools list the plugin’s strings from the start instead of scanning its files (Loco skips large files by default, which left its list incomplete).
• Canadian French (fr_CA) sites now get the bundled French translation.
• FileDeck’s blocks now use a translation of their block editor labels when one is installed — a wordpress.org language pack or your own. The bundled translations cover the front end.
• The bundled translations now also cover the year filter and the Reference column.
• Pro: the preview window’s accessible name, the zip download’s error message, the embedded library’s frame title, the embed’s PDF loading message and the Bulk Add file picker are translatable too.

2.96.1

• Fixed: on a phone, a document the visitor cannot open showed a padlock and a dash on its card with no label beside them to say what they were. They now carry their Download and Preview labels, laid out like the rest of the card.
• Fixed: on a phone, a category name too long to sit beside its label ran off the edge of the document’s card. Categories that do not fit now move onto their own line, and a name longer than the whole card wraps inside its tag.

2.96.0

• The deactivation form’s most common answer, Expected something else”, now offers an optional box for what you were hoping FileDeck would do, plus a link to tell us directly. Great, but I need a specific feature” asks which feature, and Didn’t work as expected” asks what it did instead. All optional.

2.95.0

• Year filter: an optional dropdown listing the years a library’s documents span, read from their dates — for minutes, newsletters and reports filed by year. show_year_filter="1" per library, or site-wide under Settings → Features; year="2025" pins a library to one year.
• Reference number: a new field on every document for a part number, document code or form number. Searchable in the library and in content search, and available as a sortable Reference” column. Included in the Pro CSV import and export.
• Group by category: group_by="category" renders one library as a titled section per category (Folder order, then alphabetical; Other” last) with one search box and one set of filters across all of them. Also on the Elementor widget and as a site-wide default.
• Fixed: the date-added filter compared the displayed date against the cutoff in libraries with an inline index, so it could let old documents through. Both date filters now compare machine dates.
• Fixed (Pro): a search the library matched by title, reference, category or tag was recorded as a content gap whenever the file text did not also match. The content-gaps report now records a gap only when nothing matched at all.

2.94.0

• Sample documents now show only to logged-in editors (badged Sample”); visitors, subscribers and embedded libraries do not see them — in any layout, on a document’s own page, or in the REST listing.
• Trashing or deleting the last sample by hand now removes the empty sample categories, the same as the Remove button does.
• The starter Document Library” page unpublishes itself (it becomes a draft and is not deleted) once another published page renders a library — only if it is still exactly as activation wrote it. A notice says which page superseded it, with one-click restore.
• Bundled translations of the library’s front end for Hungarian, Slovak, Spanish, German, French, Italian, Polish, Brazilian Portuguese and Simplified Chinese. A wordpress.org language pack still takes precedence.
• An empty folders or grid library now says No documents found” instead of rendering an empty frame.
• The Document Categories screen notes how many categories hold no published documents, directly or in a sub-category.
• The licence screen calls the paid build Pro version”.
• Sites five or more releases behind see a reminder on FileDeck’s own screens, with the release count and an update link.

2.93.0

• Migrations now register a plugin-managed file that lives on your own site as a Media Library attachment where it already sits (not copied or moved), instead of linking it by URL. A URL-linked document had no zip checkbox, no preview button and no thumbnail; an attached one has all three. Applies to every importer (Pro).
• Already migrated? Settings → Health now counts documents that link a local file by URL and attaches them in one click, 100 at a time — or all at once with wp filedeck attach-local-files.
• The weekly health scan reports those documents as their own check rather than probing them as external links.

2.92.1

• Hover preview cards are now off by default. Switch them on under Settings → Features → Hover preview cards” if you want them.
• Fixed: on sites where the card did show, it could render with no background — see-through, over the rows beneath it. It now carries its own surface, border and shadow.

2.92.0

• New (Pro): a Share button on every document — in the library beside Download and on the document’s own page. It copies the link, opens the device’s share sheet where the browser has one, or sends the document by email, X, Facebook, LinkedIn or WhatsApp. Off by default: switch it on and pick the networks under Settings → Features, or per library with enable_share=”1″.
• It shares the document page, never the file, so signed, gated and restricted downloads stay that way for whoever receives the link, and it loads nothing from any network until a visitor picks one.

2.89.0

• Google reCAPTCHA v2 joins Cloudflare Turnstile as a bot-protection option (Pro). Pick the service under Settings → Submissions; the one choice covers both the download bot gate and the front-end submission form.
• Switching service keeps the other service’s keys rather than deleting them, and a value that is neither reads as Turnstile rather than as no gate at all.

2.88.0

• Theme template overrides: copy a template into your theme’s filedeck/ directory to replace library markup without forking the plugin. The table row and the empty state are overridable to start with; child theme wins, then parent, then the plugin’s own copy.
• The files in the plugin’s templates/ directory are the ones FileDeck renders, so what you copy is exactly what you are replacing.

2.87.0

• Native Document Library and Document Embed elements for WPBakery (Visual Composer), Avada (Fusion Builder) and Beaver Builder, joining the ones already there for Elementor, Bricks and Divi. Oxygen has no native element: use its Shortcode element with [filedeck].
• The control-to-attribute map behind all of these now lives in one place, so a control cannot quietly stop working in one builder while it keeps working in the others.

2.86.0

• Membership-plan gating (Pro): restrict a category or a document to holders of a MemberPress, Paid Memberships Pro, WooCommerce Memberships, Restrict Content Pro or s2Member plan. Access follows the membership, so when it lapses the document goes with it. Other membership plugins can register themselves with a filter.

2.85.0

• Favourites (Pro): signed-in readers can star documents and read the list back on any page with [filedeck_my_favourites]. Access is re-checked when the list is read, so a document restricted since it was starred drops out of it.
• A New” marker now shows in the grid and gallery layouts too, not only in the table.

2.84.0

• Match my theme” now tries your theme’s second brand colour before falling back to your text colour. On themes whose first palette colour is a pale tint, the library used to turn black and white; it now picks up the colour your site actually uses.

2.83.0

• New: AI agents can search your library. FileDeck registers three read-only abilities with WordPress 6.9’s Abilities API, so agents reach them through the MCP Adapter. Results are access-filtered — a restricted document does not appear, not even its title — and agents are given a page link rather than a download URL.

2.82.0

• New: a date added” filter — Any time / Past week / month / 3 months / year — so a long library narrows to what arrived recently. Off until you switch it on, and available per library. You can also pre-filter without showing the control with period="30".

2.81.0

• New: a views column shows how many times each document has been looked at, sortable like any other column. Needs activity logging; with it off the column shows a dash rather than a zero.
• New: Duplicate a document from the Documents list. The copy keeps categories, custom fields, access rules and delivery settings, starts as a draft, and does not inherit the original’s download or view counts.

2.80.0

• The folders layout now follows your category hierarchy: a sub-category renders inside its parent, as deep as your categories go. Each folder’s count includes its sub-folders, and Download all on a parent takes them too.
• New: a select-all checkbox in the table header ticks every document at once — or, in the folders layout, just that folder.

2.79.0

• New: mark library rows as new since a signed-in visitor last looked, and dim the ones they have already downloaded. Read from the activity log and a per-person timestamp; logged-out visitors see no markers.
• New: send someone who opens a document they cannot access to a page of your own — a request access” page — instead of a not-found page. Documents assigned to named people, to a group, or filed in a client area keep the not-found page, so their existence is not disclosed.

2.78.0

• New: search synonyms. Define groups of equivalent terms so PO” finds purchase order”. Each word you type is still required; a synonym only widens what satisfies it.
• New: spelling tolerance. A search that returned no results is retried against the closest spelling from your titles, categories and tags, and the library says which word it used. Only ever a fallback — a search that found something is not second-guessed.

2.77.0

• New: groups. Name a set of people once, then give that group a client area or an individual document. Change the membership and every grant follows.
• Fixed: a document shared with a group now appears in that member’s library, not only on its own page.

2.76.0

• New: admit a whole company to a client area by email domain, so someone who joins that domain later gets in without the category being edited. Named people, groups and domains are all honoured together.
• New: [filedeck_my_downloads] shows a signed-in visitor what they have already downloaded. Documents they can no longer access drop out of the list.

2.75.0

• New: single-use download links. A link that works for exactly one download and then stops, for sending a document to one person. It expires after 7 days if unused.
• New: optional hotlink protection refuses downloads requested from another site’s pages. Requests with no referrer, and signed share links, are unaffected.

2.74.0

• New: IP rules. Limit downloads to chosen addresses or CIDR ranges, or block specific ones. Applies to every download, signed share links included. Site administrators keep access, so a mistyped rule cannot lock you out.
• New: assigning a document to named people now emails them, the same as publishing into a client area already did.

2.73.1

• Match my theme” now inherits from far more themes. It already read block-theme palettes; it now also reads Astra, Kadence, GeneratePress, OceanWP, Blocksy, Neve, Lightning, Sydney and Elementor’s global colours.
• Fixed: on Twenty Twenty-Three and Twenty Twenty-Four, Match my theme” adopted a decorative pastel as the button colour, leaving buttons that could not be read. FileDeck now checks the inherited colour for contrast and falls back to your theme’s own text colour when it would be illegible.
• Fixed: on Twenty Twenty-Five, Match my theme” did not pick up the theme’s accent colours and used the FileDeck blue instead.

2.72.7

• Fixed: an uninstall helper used a direct PHP file check where WordPress’s own wrapper is required. No behaviour change; it clears a wordpress.org review error.

2.72.6

• Fixed: labels that share the filter-chip style — the AI tier” tag beside a setting, for example — were drawn with a ×” as though you could dismiss them. The × now appears only on an active filter chip, which is the one you can actually remove.

2.72.5

• Fixed: the enter your details to download” form and the document preview box are now announced properly by screen readers — both fields have real labels and autofill hints, and each box identifies itself as a dialog.
• Changed: this readme’s feature list now covers check-out & editing locks, server-folder import, vault offload and multisite shared libraries, all of which already shipped, and describes access control accurately (role restrictions apply to categories; password protection applies to either).

2.72.4

• Fixed (AI tier): a document whose title contains an ampersand was listed under an Ask this library” answer with the raw HTML code showing — Returns & Refunds Policy” instead of Returns & Refunds Policy”. The title is also now passed to the AI unescaped.

2.72.3

• Fixed (AI tier): answers from Fireworks models could contain stray citation markers such as 【1†L1-L4】 in the middle of a sentence. They are now rendered as [1], matching the numbered sources listed under the answer.
• Changed (AI tier): Fireworks requests now ask for a low reasoning budget. Reasoning counts against the answer’s token allowance, so this makes answers cheaper and faster, and stops a long deliberation from using up the whole budget and returning nothing. Models that don’t accept the setting are detected and retried without it.

2.72.2

• Added (AI tier): Fireworks AI joins Anthropic and OpenAI as a chat provider for Ask this library” and the AI summary & tag suggestions. Bring your own Fireworks key; the default model is gpt-oss-120b, and you can set any Fireworks model id (a bare id is qualified for you).
• Changed: the chat provider list on the Settings screen is now built from the registered providers, so a provider added by the filedeck_chat_providers filter is both selectable and saveable.
• Fixed: this readme described the AI features as part of Pro. They are the separate AI tier and are not included in Pro.

2.72.1

• Fixed: if a second copy of FileDeck was installed alongside the first (most often the Pro download added as its own folder while the free version was still active), activating it failed with WordPress’s plugin could not be activated because it triggered a fatal error”. FileDeck now stands down cleanly and tells you which copy is running and which to remove.
• Added: document revision history. Edits to a document’s description are recoverable from the editor, the same as posts and pages.
• Fixed: Custom order” under Documents > Settings > Library now works. The option was selectable but there was no way to set an order, so it had no effect; documents now have an Order field in the editor sidebar.

2.72.0

• Security and reliability improvements across document access, imports and outbound email.
• Changed (Pro): per-role daily download allowances apply to signed-in visitors, counted per person. If you have per-role allowances configured, check the numbers under Documents > Settings > Downloads after updating — some may not have been taking effect.
• Changed (Pro): documents with a download limit, and sites with download allowances configured, are no longer served to automated clients such as search engines, link previews and uptime monitors. A bot can no longer spend a limited document’s allowance, and people are unaffected.
• Changed (Pro): the activity log records the signed-in person against downloads, terms acceptances and acknowledgements, and files acknowledgements, transmittals, retention and access reviews under their own event types rather than counting them as downloads. Existing reports will change shape accordingly.
• Changed (Pro): importing from another document plugin no longer publishes items the source was keeping out of public view — where the source stores documents as posts, anything draft, pending or private arrives as a FileDeck draft for you to review and publish.
• Changed (AI): a watermarked PDF carries the downloader’s email address when they are signed in, as intended, rather than always reading a visitor”.
• Changed (Pro): uninstalling leaves a plain-text note in the protected-files folder explaining what is in there and how to get it back. The files stay protected — removing the plugin does not make restricted documents publicly downloadable.
• Fixed (Pro): Delete all data on uninstall” also removes transmittal records and smart collections. Uninstalling now clears FileDeck’s scheduled tasks either way.
• Fixed (Pro): a category password containing symbols such as % or < is stored exactly as typed. If you set one that never accepted the password you chose, re-save it.
• Fixed (AI): starting a PDF accessibility scan completes in the background and fills in the report.

2.71.2

• Fixed: on a short browser window, a filter with a long list of categories now shrinks and scrolls rather than running off the top or bottom of the screen.

2.71.1

• Fixed: opening a category, tag or custom-field filter pushed the whole document table down the page. The filter panel now opens over the library instead of inside it, so nothing moves, and it closes when you click away or press Escape.

2.71.0

• Added: the free version now says what the paid tiers add, at the point it is relevant — a preview of the Visibility control on the document screen, the Settings sections Pro adds, a note when another document plugin on the same site has documents FileDeck could import, and a note about searching inside files once a library grows past a few hundred documents. Each one is dismissible for good, none of them block anything, and nothing that worked before has been locked or removed.

2.70.1

• Fixed (Pro): the new bulk access actions changed a document’s visibility without moving its file into the protected vault, so documents bulk-restricted in 2.70.0 were hidden from libraries while their files stayed publicly reachable. Re-apply the access change on any documents you bulk-restricted, or re-save them, and the files will be protected correctly.
• Fixed (Pro): a document assigned to specific people is now visible to administrators in libraries, as described. It was being hidden from them too.
• Fixed (Pro): the list of people on a document now always includes everyone already assigned, however many users the site has. Previously, on sites with more than 200 users, re-saving a document could drop an assignee who was not shown.
• Fixed (Pro): the people picker is only shown to users who are allowed to list site users, and email addresses are hidden from anyone who is not.
• Fixed (Pro): deleting a user, or removing them from a site, now clears their document assignments.
• Fixed (Pro): Download all” on a folder now downloads the documents you can see, rather than the whole folder, when a search or filter is narrowing it.

2.70.0

• Added (Pro): assign a document to specific people. Only they (and administrators) can see or download it — and it does not appear in anyone else’s library at all, not even as a locked row, so one client can never learn what another client has.
• Added (Pro): Download all” on a folder, which zips everything in it in one go. It passes the same lead-capture, terms and bot checks as any other download.
• Added (Pro): bulk access changes from the Documents list — make a selection public or logged-in-only in one action, for reorganising a large import.

2.69.0

• Fixed: a library added to the page after it loads — by a page builder’s tabs or popup, a theme’s own scripting, or anything else that inserts content later — now starts properly instead of rendering correctly and then doing nothing. Previously its search box, filters and sortable columns were all inert, with nothing to indicate why.
• Added (developers): window.filedeckInit( element ) starts any library that isn’t already running, and each one fires a bubbling fdk:ready event as it starts. Safe to call more than once — a library that is already running is left alone.

2.68.0

• Added: filters are multi-select — pick several categories, tags or custom-field values at once and the library shows documents matching any of them. Different filters still narrow each other.
• Added: every filter option shows how many documents are behind it, and the counts re-narrow as other filters and the search box change.
• Added: an active-filter bar above the library naming each applied value, with a Clear all. Removing one leaves the rest in place.
• Added: sort by more than one column — shift-click (or Shift+Enter) a second heading to add it as a tiebreaker, up to three columns, with a number showing the order.
• Added: the sort order and page number now travel in the shareable link alongside the search term and filters, so a copied link reproduces the whole view.
• Added: infinite scroll as a third pagination mode. The Load more button stays on the page for keyboard and screen-reader visitors, and it pauses for a click after five automatic loads.
• Added: an optional fixed library height (Settings → Display, or height=”600px”) that scrolls the documents in place while the search box and filters stay put.
• Added: filters can sit under the table’s column headings instead of in the bar above (Settings → Display, or filter_position=”headings”).
• Added (Pro): full-text search now reads OpenDocument files (.odt, .ods, .odp) alongside PDF, Word, Excel and PowerPoint. Existing OpenDocument documents are re-indexed in the background after updating.

2.67.1

• Changed: tested against WordPress 7.1 (added to the automated test matrix alongside 6.4 and 7.0).

2.67.0

• Improved (Pro): the Documents menu in wp-admin is grouped by the job you’re doing — a new Compliance section for acknowledgments, review cycles, retention, certification, transmittals and accessibility; Insights limited to analytics and the activity log; People renamed Audience; and Collections beside the document categories and tags. A section appears once you have at least two of its screens, so a screen you have on its own simply keeps its own entry.
• Fixed (Pro): several FileDeck screens were listed after Settings in the Documents menu rather than before it. Every screen keeps its existing address, so bookmarks and saved links are unaffected.

2.66.0

• Improved: the Copy link button above a library now appears once a search, category, tag or custom-field filter is active, instead of on every untouched library where it would copy the address your browser is already showing. The link itself is unchanged.
• Added: a Copy link” button checkbox under Settings → Features, for sites that would rather not offer it at all.

2.65.0

• Improved: choosing I couldn’t understand how to make it work” when deactivating now offers an optional text box for what was unclear, plus direct links to the quick-start guide and support — get help on the spot instead of giving up.

2.64.0

• Added: several libraries on one page now keep independent search/filter/share state — Copy link records each library’s own view, a shared link restores each one independently, and pre-2.64.0 links keep working (they target the page’s first library).
• Added: an optional empty-state link (Documents → Settings, or empty_link_text + empty_link_url on the shortcode) so a can’t find it? let us know” message can point at your contact page.
• Fixed: the empty-state message swap no longer rewrites the whole element, so the link survives search/filter changes.

2.63.0

• Added: the FileDeck Library Elementor widget’s Categories and Columns are now proper pickers — categories are chosen from a list of your real categories (no slugs), and columns from a list of every available column (they render in FileDeck’s standard order; use the shortcode for a custom order). Old text-based values keep rendering unchanged.
• Added: administrators now see an on-page note when a library is showing FileDeck’s sample documents, with one-click links to add real documents or remove the samples. The note is admin-only and never appears in anonymous output.
• Added: the CSV import result screen lists any categories or tags the import newly created, and the help text + sample CSV now show the | separator for putting a document in several categories.
• Fixed: search no longer matches documents on leftover HTML codes from names containing &” (a CAD & 2D models” category made the query amp” match every document in it), and the hover card shows &” correctly in category names.
• Fixed: the search box keeps its icon spacing and the Copy link” button keeps its quiet secondary look under themes with aggressive input/button CSS.

2.62.0

• Added: two new Elementor widgets — FileDeck Search (a standalone search box that lands on your library page with the query applied) and FileDeck PDF Viewer (the Document Embed widget under the name the widget panel is actually searched for; same controls).
• Added: native Document Embed elements for Bricks and Divi alongside the existing Document Library elements — document ID, height/width, optional download link and title caption.
• Added (Pro): the Elementor Document Embed widget gains a Style tab — frame border, radius, background, and an accent colour for the controls inside the embed.
• Fixed: with JavaScript unavailable, a FileDeck-viewer embed now falls back to the browser’s own PDF display instead of an empty frame.

2.61.0

• Added (Pro): the FileDeck viewer — a self-hosted PDF viewer for inline embeds (engine="pdfjs", or site-wide under Settings → Features → Document viewer). Zoom, page navigation, in-document find with highlighted matches, print, and a real selectable text layer, all served from your own site. Because no external viewer service is involved, protected files, signed links, view-only streams and watermarked documents all render.
• Added (Pro): popup mode for the inline embed (mode="popup", or the block/Elementor toggle) — a View button opens the document in an overlay, and the document loads only when opened.
• Fixed: …