Knowing your uploads from your URL’s and your downloads!

I decided to write this quick post: how to upload a pdf to wordpress, after stumbling across some very confused people, of which at one time I was exactly the same.

So what I intend to do here is take it a little bit further, for example if you want to give away a downloadable ebook from your website or – to make it even worse – from an opt in form on your website. If you don’t know what an opt-in form/pop-up is, there are both on this site; top right and one will ‘pop-up’ from the bottom of the page as well as one below in this article.

I am going to refer to the WordPress blog platform and to add to that the autoresonder platform from Getresponse.

So, the problem was how to upload a file to a wordpress site to then be able to place the link to the file in a blog post.

1. Add new post.

In the left hand colum toward the top, click on ‘Post’ and then ‘add new’

2. Click “Add Media” button

3. Using the file selection panel, select your PDF and click the upload button. Or you can simply drag the pdf icon onto the panel.

4. After it uploads, you’ll have this new section that shows a Title, Caption, Description, and Link URL. Fill in any of the fields the way you want.

The actual URL to create download link is the one indicated in the picture NOT the top ‘URL’. If you want to create a download link, copy the URL below ‘media file’ dropdown

5. Click “Insert into Post”.

The image will now appear in your post.

You now have 2 options: Click the image to select it, go up to the toolbar click the ‘chain link’icon, paste the link you copied in step 4 into the URL box. You can aslo write a piece of text e.g ‘Download Here’ select both words, go to the toolbar at the top of the page, click on the image; paste the link you copied in step 4 into the URL box. When anyone visits your site and clicks on either the image or the hypertextlink the pdf file will automatically download.

For an autoresponder – which I will expand on more in other posts. You simply enter the URL copied in step 4 into the ‘custom URL’ box. When a customer recieves the link and clicks on it, the pdf will automatically download