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Archive for PDF

Upload & Link to a PDF in WordPress

August 3rd, 2015

Lots of churches still produce a print newsletter or flyers for events, and might want to create a link to download these PDF’s from their websites.

Step 1: Create a PDF

savepdfIf your original document is is Microsoft Word or Publisher, you can easily save this as a PDF.  Look directly under the box for entering the file name, and there is a drop-down that lets you change the file type; one option is PDF.

Be sure to choose the options for “Minimum Size” for publishing on the web.  Remember where you saved the document.

There are also a number of “print to PDF” applications like this one, that will let you choose to create a PDF through “printing” the document from any application.  These options may not let you choose a minimized file size, and if you have a lot of graphics or images in your document, then your PDF may be large for uploading and downloading.

Step 2: Select your link text

Highlight with your cursor the text that you will make into the link.

Step 3: Upload your PDF

On the WordPress dashboard, look for the “Add Media” button, located right above the Bold & Italics buttons.  Click this button, and then click the link “Upload Files”.  You can either drag & drop your file in the uploader or click on “Select Files”, and get your PDF uploaded.

Step 4: Select & copy the URL of the uploaded file

On the right side of the media uploader, look toward the bottom of the gray box for a URL for the uploaded file.  Depending on how you uploaded your PDF, this link may be automatically highlighted, or you may need to select the link.  If you need to select it, put your cursor in the link, and then right-click and choose “Select all” to make sure you get the whole link highlighted.  Then copy this link to your clipboard, using either a Ctrl + C, or right-click + Copy.

Then– and this is counter-intuitive — do NOT click the “Insert into Post” button, but instead, click the X in the upper right corner to close the media uploader.

Step 5: Create the link

linkiconThat URL is still on your clipboard.  Closing the media uploader will take you back to your post or page.  The text that you will be making into a link should still be highlighted, but you can always highlight it again.  Now just create a link like you normally would, looking for the chain icon in the top row.  (Click on the icon, paste in your link, click “Add Link”.)

After you publish or update the post/page, you should have a link to your PDF.  How this link behaves will depend on how the user has set up their browser to handle PDFs– it may download the file or it may open the PDF– you have no control over these options.

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Websites & Email Newsletters

October 1st, 2014

old newsletterWhen publishing both an email newsletter and website, make sure the website is the “hub” of full information that serves the newsletter, and not the other way around.

Churches often come with long histories (sometimes 50 years!) of publishing print newsletters, which have been the center of publicizing events. That print newsletter mindset sometimes tries to carry over to the email newsletter, rendering it less effective.

Email newsletters cannot effectively be digital versions of print newsletters. Instead, they function better as a “vehicle for links” to more information, most often info on your website.

Recipients don’t really “read” emails, they scan them, usually only one or two “scrolls” down, so putting long blocks of text in an email means they won’t see much besides the first article or two. The “vehicle for links” strategy makes your newsletter more easily scanned, and the recipient can quickly see things that are relevant to them, and click to read more.

You may still publish a print newsletter, particularly if your congregation has a number of people who don’t access digital media, but if you hope to reach digital folks (which includes most people under age 50), then you will want to make sure that you don’t just put downloads of your print newsletter on your website.  Only publishing your newsletter PDF on your website is making (attempting to make) your print newsletter the hub of information.

These PDF downloads are increasingly unlikely to be opened. If I am accessing my email on my phone, I may not want to try to “pinch and scroll” through your PDF that won’t resize itself to my small screen.  And if your recipient doesn’t open your attachment when they first see your email, they are far less likely to open it later.

Also, while Google (and other search engines) CAN index your PDFs, they don’t like to—it confuses them.  And even if search engines DO index your newsletter, when someone searches, it will only take them to the PDF download link, then they will have to scan through your entire PDF newsletter to find the one thing that they were looking for.

Conversely, think about how easy the user experience would be if the website had a post about the “Chocolate Festival” fundraiser that my friend has told me about, but I want to check the time. I’m likely to Google your church name and “chocolate festival”.  That search is likely to take me directly the information I’m looking for, which makes it more likely that I actually attend—instead of giving up when I’m faced with a whole newsletter to wade through.

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Open a PDF from a Menu Link

June 17th, 2014

wordpress menuSome churches want to have a link in their menu to the latest issue of their newsletter. This is probably not the main level menu item. Ideally when you do this, you want the newsletter menu item to directly open up the PDF – not go to a page where there is a link to click for the PDF. Adding that extra step to get your content is never a good idea.

So here’s how to add a PDF link directly to your menu:

  1. First, go to Media –Add New.  Upload your PDF, and when it’s finished uploading, click on Edit.
  2. When the Edit page opens, put your cursor inside the URL box, right-click, and choose Select All (or, what your cursor inside the box and type Ctrl+A). This makes sure that you have selected the entire URL.
  3. Right-click again, and choose Copy (or, simply type Ctrl+C). This places the URL for your uploaded PDF on your clipboard.
  4. Now navigate to your menu. In the WordPress dashboard, this is under Appearance – Menus.
  5. On the left side of the Menus page, the Pages section will probably be opened. Look underneath this for “Links”, and click on the small arrow on the right side of that box to open the Links section.
  6. In the URL box, highlight the “http://” (so that you don’t end up with two of those, since the link on your clipboard already has its http://) and paste the link from your clipboard into this box.
  7. Type the word “Newsletter” in the Link Text box.  Rather than making this label date-sensitive, I recommend a more general and simple label, which you will not need to change each month.
  8. Click the Add to Menu button, and your new menu item will then appear at the bottom, of your menu on the right side of this page. If you have a long menu with lots of sub pages, you may have to scroll down to see it at the bottom.
  9. The top of the menu section represents the left side of your horizontal menu, and indents pages represent sub pages. Drag-and-drop your newly created Newsletter page to the desired position in your menu.
  10. Don’t forget to click the Save Menu button, located at the top and bottom of the menu section on the right side.

Do check the front of your site to make sure that the new menu item appears properly.

When you click on this menu item, one of two things will happen, depending on how the user has set up their browser to handle PDFs:

  • The PDF may open immediately as a webpage, and the user can save or download from there.
  • The user may get a prompt to download and save the PDF. After they do this, then they can open the PDF on their desktop with Adobe Reader (which almost everyone has on their computer at this point, so there is no need to make links to download Adobe reader).

As the website manager, you cannot control which of these two things will happen, since this is set entirely within the user’s browser settings.

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