use as template function

I’m not quite sure exactly what you mean by template page — based on the description, I’m assuming it’s a dynamically created page via your theme or some plugin where you define the layout in advance in a template or maybe in a settings page or something like that. If that’s the case, then yeah it’s not gonna work. EBD is based off that shortcode. If you look around line 111 of email-before-download.php you’ll see a function where it parses the shortcode for the attributes and continues from there. And, beyond that, at some point it will do a string replace into the contents of the wordpress page (putting in the download link or whatever). Plus, there’s some ajax that happens in there too. I think it would be quite difficult to make it work “inside” some other plugin or special template or page or dynamic page type thing.

There was a post 2-3 years ago asking for the same thing (place the function in the php file) and the plugin author would consider it. It looks like either he decided against it or couldn’t get it to work. Thanks. I’ll have to look at other options.