Frequently Asked Question – PDF Uploads

One of my favorite clients is planning and promoting a huge workshop and created a digital flier that she wanted to share with her community via her website. She created the flier as a PDF document, because she is also sharing the flier with different online/email groups etc. and needed to pass it around electronically. So here’s the dilemma…

What She Tried

1. She wanted to upload the PDF flier to her WordPress blog so that people could view it immediately when they visited the page.

2. She tried uploading it via her media uploader on her WordPress blog and then pasted the link on a new page on her blog.

The Problem

The web reads PDFs as files so any file with .pdf at the end of the url will be shown as a downloadable link (http://myguide.pdf). People click on the link and they can download your pdf file which is great in many instances where we are sharing information to be downloaded and read – but the client wants people to immediately be able to view the flier. So…

The Solution

There are several workarounds for this issue. The end result we want is a visual representation of the flier. In other words we need to make an image versus a file.

1. Use the software that you used to create the original document and “save as” a .tiff, .png, or .jpg file. All of these are image formats.

2. If you cannot save your document as an image then the next best thing to do is to “take a picture” of your document. This is what I usually do because it’s a super fast solution.

So you would simply open up your pdf file and take a screenshot of it. I use Jing to take all my screenshots. It’s free and easy to use. I also have a screenshot tool which is a browser extension on Chrome, but the problem with some of these tools is that they are only for capturing things you have showing in your web browser and not your entire computer. That’s why I end up mostly using Jing. Whatever you use, most screenshot software is free.

3. Save and name your new image. Upload it to your website using whatever FTP method you use. In WordPress you could simply use the Add Media option. Add the image to a new post or page on your website and presto! Now people can see and read your pdf file without having to download it first.

Note: This obviously works well with one page files because you are creating one image, but if you have more pages you just need to create an image file for each page, repeating the screenshot process for each page, and then inserting each image into your post or page.

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Lisa Angelettie

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I make a living writing, ePublishing, and marketing books and teaching others how to do the same. I have one mission: To turn you into the best writer that you can be while enjoying every minute of it!

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