January 29th, 2026
If you run a WooCommerce shop that sells digital goodies like e‑books, manuals, or templates in PDF format, you already know how satisfying it is to watch a customer click “Download.” Imagine taking that moment a step further: each PDF leaves the checkout with a tiny, personalized imprint—perhaps their name and email, order number, copyright notice, or timestamp—right on (or hidden inside) the file. Not only does this add a professional touch, it helps you prove ownership, deter piracy, and keep tidy records. PDF Ink allows for adding quite a bit of customer data easily using magic tags. There is no magic tag for VAT, but using a little code, we can and add a […]
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October 5th, 2025
WooCommerce order numbers often appear inconsistent due to WordPress's auto-increment ID system. Sequential numbering plugins create a proxy mapping for clean, consecutive order numbers. PDF Ink takes this further by allowing easy watermarking with dynamic tags like [ORDERNUMBER], enabling shops to generate professionally branded, personalized downloadable PDFs with minimal effort.
March 12th, 2025
A case study showing how to get a customer's WooCommerce order information printed on their PDF during download, to discourage file sharing & theft. In this case, we have a sheet music distributor who wishes to stamp the purchasing choir name on each page.
November 13th, 2023
Here is some PHP code for WordPress/WooCommerce which will make PDF Ink recognize TWO custom shortcodes in any watermark content: [VARIATION_DESC] and [VARIATION_NAME]. These translate to variation description and variation name, both aspects of a WooCommerce variable product. This code (everything above the dashed line) should get added anywhere in your functions.php file. If unsure where to put it, add it at the end of the file. You could also add the snippet using the WordPress plugin called “CODE SNIPPETS” (front and back end). This snippet development was sponsored by customer Michael. Thanks Michael! For reference (maybe for people migrating from WaterWoo to PDF Ink) here is a snippet which would have worked with WaterWoo:
February 15th, 2021
There are quite a few built in shortcodes, but sometimes we just need something… special. You can add your own shortcodes to PDF Ink for on-the-fly customized watermarks on PDF pages. In this simple example we are going to create a shortcode to reflect a customer’s order total (price) in the watermark, when using a custom shortcode: [TOTAL_PRICE] Now when you use [TOTAL_PRICE] in your watermark, the PDF will show the total price of the WooCommerce order the PDF was purchased in. Perhaps this way you could print out the price on a gift certificate. More on how to create gift certificates using PDF Ink can be found here. Another Example In the following example […]
June 1st, 2020
This is a bit more of a technical post for PDF Ink users who would like to add dynamic customer or order data to file watermarks–data that isn’t already covered in existing PDF Ink “Magic Tags.” There are already magic tags for order number, purchase date, quantity Purchased, customer name, address, phone, email, etc. etc. But maybe your project requires pulling a different tidbit from the customer profile or order data. If that’s the case, keep reading. Your project will likely involve writing a few lines of code. These days you can probably present the question to AI and have it write a PHP snippet for you. If you would rather have human help, or […]
October 6th, 2018
Here is an example of adding new magic tags to PDF Ink for on-the-fly and totally-customized watermarks. A Brazilian customer using WooCommerce requested a magic tag to display the Cadastro de Pessoas Físicas (CPF) on PDFs. CPF is a taxpayer identification number all citizens of Brazil must use to shop online within Brasil. In order to collect CPF data from customers, our customer uses the Woocommerce Extra Checkout Fields for Brazil plugin.* We wrote the following code to programmatically create the magic tag [BILLING_CPF]. This magic tag will import any customer’s CPF number into their personalized PDF during stamping (when the customer clicks download). The “WooCommerce Extra Checkout” plugin mentioned above must be in use, […]