Resumes, printable coupons, eBooks, and many other type of documents are prepared for distribution and printing as an Adobe PDF, (Portable Document Format), file.
If you have PDF files that you want to make available for download on your blog, follow these easy steps:
- login to the Admin area of your WordPress blog
- click Write Post
- give the post a Title and begin to enter the text of the post
- at the point in your post where you want the PDF link to appear, click the Add Media icon
- A window will appear prompting you to Choose Files to Upload.
- Click the Choose Files to Upload button and select the .PDF file you want to attach to the post. WordPress will upload the file to your webserver, and the contents of the window will change, prompting you to enter a Title, Caption and Description.(*Note: this tutorial demonstrates how to upload a PDF to your own WordPress / website. If you want to just link to a PDF that is already on the web, simply fill in the URL and Title fields and skip the step of uploading the PDF file)
The Title is the text that will appear in your post as the link text someone will need to click to download the PDF file, enter something appropriate, (e.g.- “Download My Resume as a PDF”, or “Download Printable Coupons”, etc– something to let the user, and the search engines know what the PDF file contains).
For the Link URL field, click the [File URL] button to automatically populate field with the absolute URL of the file. (Note – this step added 9/30/2009. This tutorial does not cover use of other URLs in this field).
You do not have to fill in any other blanks, although you may want to enter a brief description and caption for reference.
- Once you have entered the Title and any other info, and populated the Link URL field, click the [Insert into Post] button.
Based on our example, the link below was inserted into this post, and you can click it to download the sample PDF file.
Do you know why at times when we try to upload a pdf file you get an http error? But when you use the Browser uploader it works fine?
You are using the Flash uploader. Problems?
Try the Browser uploader instead.
Is there something you can do to use the flash uploader ?
Thanks.
I checked the URL, and clicked the “Click Here to See Paper” link, (and PDF did show).
The upload problem you’re having (with Flash uploader), is a known problem having to do with the first account with “Admin” level access, and subsequent “Admin” level accounts. I noticed your article was posted by “admin1″, so I suspect your are hitting that problem.
If you have access to the original “admin” login, and also have a WP account which is set to Admin level, see if it works in either. Be sure to delete all cookies for that site and clear cache between tests. This could also be browser or browser setting issue.
This article may help:
http://thethemeblog.com/wordpress/a-solution-to-http-error-using-wordpress-flash-uploader-problem
Or some info in the official WordPress support area…
http://wordpress.org/support/topic/164999
Hope this helps.
When I follow these instructions for uploading a PDF file to a WordPress page, I get the message, “specified file failed upload test.”
Any idea what I’m doing wrong?
Thanks.
I did a quick search on google for the exact error message you report, plus the term wordpress, e.g.-
Google: “specified file failed upload test” wordpress
It returned a URL: http://wordpress.org/support/topic/164290
It appears to be a common, but fixable problem (something on your end, e.g. browser, file, or your host, not WordPress).
Thank gawd for your website. I thought I was going to cry. I was shaking trying to find tips to attach a file to a doc. Thank you!
Glad it helped!
Just great to read some instructions that I can understand. More often I need to be a rocket scientist to understand what are meant easy to understand instructions.
Yes, thank you for this.
I’m no newbie, and I searched through a lot of material (like info about uploading files in 2.7, which looked very different, and plugins that tell you what files are attached to a post) before I found this perfectly clear, very welcome set of directions.
I wrote it because I couldn’t find any good directions myself. I work on so many different aspects of web development, I sometimes have to refer back to my own tutorials when I forget how I did something before. I’m glad it’s been useful to others.
Ok i follwed all the instructions as mentioned above. It all worked fine in wordpress 2.7 but i recently upgraded to wordpress 2.8.4 .
Now when i upload a pdf file it appears as a link and when you click on the link, it takes you to a separate page with file download link.
All i want is that when i upload a file it appears as a downloadable link not to take me to a different page to download a file. Although When i check the html of the page i can see the link to the file attached but when i save it the wordpress editor saves it as a link to a separate page instead of a downloadable link.
Also the attached file contains rel=”attachment” which seems to be the problem as when i remove the rel tag the file appears as a downloadable link.
Any help greatly appreciated
I tried to duplicate your issue. (I am running WordPress v2.8.4 also). It works the same way for me; the PDF opens in the same window as the post and the browser [BACK] button will take you back to the post.
I suspect it was something to do with the Link URL you used… I have updated the article to instruct people to click the “File URL” button to populate the “Link URL” field in the upload dialog. Entering something else may cause different behaviors, (such as you describe, and; which I have not experimented with… yet)
Try again, and let us know if you can’t get it to work.
Thanks for this tip. I had to add mime type to be able to upload Windows Registry files.
YOU are the BEST. I just figured out what I was doing wrong in about 5 seconds thanks to this great post. THANK YOU! Amy
When I try to link a pdf to a specific page, not a blog, it doesn’t seem to link. Although it does upload to the media library and is identified there as attached to the correct page. Any advice?
Did you use the Insert Into Post button after you uploaded the PDF ?
I have spent a whole week trying night and day to insert page tags in my long separated wp posts but nothing appears. I don’t understand CODE language and the instructions give say, in wp-paginating.
May be I have come to the right place for an explanation.
Thanks
Edna
Hi Edna,
Unfortunately I am not using any of the pagination features or plug-ins. I suggest using the WP support forums — there are a lot of topics on paging there already, and many people who are working on the same issues.
See: http://wordpress.org/support/
Sorry I couldn’t be more help.
Randy.
Thanks for the great instructions. PDF newsletter posted successfully on my website.