pdfs still a no go?

thaKing · August 16, 2013

Searching for "pdf" is too small of a search phrase, so I figured I'd ask - with the new SM, are pdfs still a no go?

thenickdude · August 17, 2013

You can't host a PDF on SmugMug, or embed it into your page. But if you have webhosting elsewhere, you could upload the PDF there and then give your customers a link to it from SmugMug.

macromeister · August 17, 2013

thaKing wrote: »

Searching for "pdf" is too small of a search phrase, so I figured I'd ask - with the new SM, are pdfs still a no go?

It's quite easy, and works well. As lamah said you just need to host your pdfs somewhere external and then link to them from a menu on your site, or perhaps embed on a page. See this thread http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=238228 I have just put one on my menu so you can see what it does. From my menu select 'test'. The pdf is just a car brochure, but you can do it for any doc, I think. Here http://www.macromeister.co.uk/ When you select test it will go to google docs, and when you select back it will return to site. Make sure your docs are marked as public - the default is private. You will need to set up Google drive account if you don't have one. It's useful to have one anyway.

macromeister · August 17, 2013

I have modified what I mentioned above.

I created a new page called PDFs. Onto that I dragged some HTML and embedded some links to my Google docs on Google Drive. Menu tab is now called 'PDFs' and links direct to the new page http://www.macromeister.co.uk The PDFs are loaded in the same browser tab, but you could have them load in a new one.

Here's my HTML page in customisation.

Andy · August 17, 2013

thaKing wrote: »

Searching for "pdf" is too small of a search phrase,

Go to google, type in this:

site:www.dgrin.com pdf

thaKing · August 18, 2013

Lamah wrote: »

You can't host a PDF on SmugMug, or embed it into your page. But if you have webhosting elsewhere, you could upload the PDF there and then give your customers a link to it from SmugMug.

macromeister wrote: »

It's quite easy, and works well. As lamah said you just need to host your pdfs somewhere external and then link to them from a menu on your site, or perhaps embed on a page. See this thread http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=238228 I have just put one on my menu so you can see what it does. From my menu select 'test'. The pdf is just a car brochure, but you can do it for any doc, I think. Here http://www.macromeister.co.uk/ When you select test it will go to google docs, and when you select back it will return to site. Make sure your docs are marked as public - the default is private. You will need to set up Google drive account if you don't have one. It's useful to have one anyway.

That's too bad....this is one feature that, in my opinion, is severely overlooked. Hosting somewhere else and forcing clients to leave your site is equivalent to using a yahoo.com email account - very unprofessional. Many clients have asked me for a pricing list, which I just email to them. But wouldn't it be nice to have one they could download from your site????

Andy wrote: »

Go to google, type in this:

site:www.dgrin.com pdf

Too much work.

thenickdude · August 18, 2013

They don't really have to leave your site, just link them directly to the PDF file. It'll open up in their viewer or start downloading without navigating away from your site.

macromeister · August 18, 2013

Lamah wrote: »

They don't really have to leave your site, just link them directly to the PDF file. It'll open up in their viewer or start downloading without navigating away from your site.

Well, they sort of do. If you use my PDF link they go to the Google page (not in a new tab), then when they do a back they return to the site. But aren't we get ahead of ourselves here - why can't we upload PDFs? They are just another type of file, so what's the reason?

thenickdude · August 18, 2013

macromeister wrote: »

Well, they sort of do. If you use my PDF link they go to the Google page (not in a new tab), then when they do a back they return to the site.

Don't link them to a page, link them to an actual PDF file, like this:

Please check out <a href="http://s3.sherlockphotography.org/posts/2013/goldberg.pdf">My 2013 price list!</a>

Demo:

http://www.sherlockphotography.org/Test/n-t6LqN

But aren't we get ahead of ourselves here - why can't we upload PDFs? They are just another type of file, so what's the reason?<img src="https://us.v-cdn.net/6029383/emoji/headscratch.gif" border="0" alt="" >

SmugMug probably don't want to become a general file host and end up paying for the bandwidth of people's illegal music collections or other junk that they post on their SmugMug page.

macromeister · August 18, 2013

Lamah wrote: »
Don't link them to a page, link them to an actual PDF file, like this:
Please check out <a href="http://s3.sherlockphotography.org/posts/2013/goldberg.pdf">My 2013 price list!</a>
Demo:

http://www.sherlockphotography.org/Test/n-t6LqN

Looks good. So where exactly is your PDF file located?

thenickdude · August 18, 2013

Any webhost which allows you to upload a file and hotlink to it, which is most of them. The host I'm using is Amazon S3, because on that webhost you pay by the megabyte of traffic used, and my yearly fee comes to about 10 cents. Unfortunately, that webhost is not really suitable for a beginner

. Maybe I'll write a tutorial about using it one of these days.

EDIT: I set up my web hosting so that the domain name for it was a subdomain of my SmugMug one, s3.sherlockphotography.org, but it'll still work fine even if you post the file to like myphotos.freehosting.com or something.

thaKing · August 18, 2013

macromeister wrote: »

why can't we upload PDFs? They are just another type of file, so what's the reason?<img src="https://us.v-cdn.net/6029383/emoji/headscratch.gif" border="0" alt="" >

Never been able to and I think Lamah is correct - they don't want to be a general file hosting. How would they restrict it so that they're not just a bunch of random pdfs? But I would like the option.

Lamah wrote: »
Don't link them to a page, link them to an actual PDF file, like this:
Please check out <a href="http://s3.sherlockphotography.org/posts/2013/goldberg.pdf">My 2013 price list!</a>
Demo:

http://www.sherlockphotography.org/Test/n-t6LqN

SmugMug probably don't want to become a general file host and end up paying for the bandwidth of people's illegal music collections or other junk that they post on their SmugMug page.

OK - I like your example because the link is not google docs or dropbox, etc. It links to your domain. Details please?

Edit: I see that you were replying while I was typing. I see what you're doing. I use godaddy - will have to check that option out. Why didn't I think of this sooner??!!

thenickdude · August 19, 2013

The other reason that SmugMug wouldn't be keen to enable file hosting now is that they don't allow JavaScript on their pages, and if you could upload any file, you could upload an HTML page that had JavaScript in it.

macromeister · August 19, 2013

Lamah wrote: »

Any webhost which allows you to upload a file and hotlink to it, which is most of them. The host I'm using is Amazon S3, because on that webhost you pay by the megabyte of traffic used, and my yearly fee comes to about 10 cents. Unfortunately, that webhost is not really suitable for a beginner . Maybe I'll write a tutorial about using it one of these days.

EDIT: I set up my web hosting so that the domain name for it was a subdomain of my SmugMug one, s3.sherlockphotography.org, but it'll still work fine even if you post the file to like myphotos.freehosting.com or something.

Thanks, Nicholas. That's very useful. I set up an S3 account, and uploaded a few files. It seems to work very well. I presume you have to make the files public (which I did). Can't quite figure out the sub-domain thing. I created a bucket called 'macromeister' but I'm getting the amazon 's3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com' before the file name. Doesn't matter too much though. Select PDFs from http://www.macromeister.co.uk/

thenickdude · August 19, 2013

Ah, you can create a bucket called "whateveryoulike.macromeister.co.uk" instead, then set up a CNAME for that subdomain in the DNS settings for your domain name following these directions:

http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonS3/latest/dev/VirtualHosting.html#VirtualHostingCustomURLs

Basically, create a new CNAME called "whateveryoulike" which points to the full whateveryoulike.macromeister.co.uk.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com domain.

pdfs still a no go?

Comments