Adding PDFs to WordPress

Adding PDFs to WordPress

Introduction

Let’s start with a link to the official support article! https://wordpress.com/support/embed-a-pdf-file/

It’s very easy to upload a PDF onto a page or a post. But once again, size matters … PDFs can be large, like photos. The larger your PDF, the longer your page takes to load, and the more storage it uses up on your hosting account. So it’s really important to try to remember to compress PDFs before you upload them.

Step 1 – Compress your PDF

You can easily compress your PDF by using this site https://smallpdf.com/compress-pdf
As an aside, Smallpdf.com is a fantastic site which does a lot more than compress PDFs … check it out. They also have a generous free tier (these links are not affiliated and I receive nothing for making this recommendation)

Simply drag your file onto the box, or upload from file manager. Select ‘Basic Compression’ and then download the compressed file.

Tip: you only get 2 free tasks per day, but you can easily work around this by using a private / incognito tab and then opening a new one after 2 compressions (or clear your site cookies for the same effect).

Step 2 – Embed or link your PDF

Embed Your PDF

Now you have your file, you can easily embed it! Just add a ‘file’ block to the page, and then click upload to upload your PDF. Once added you’ll get a PDF viewer, with a download button added automatically for you

Screenshot showing the file block

Link to Your PDF

To link to your PDF you first need to upload it to eh media library and then get the link.

Open the media library and either upload the document or drag it onto the library from file explorer. Then c lick on it and ‘copy url to clipboard’ from the right hand panel.

After that it’s simply a case of adding a hyperlink to the text (See https://www.greystokewebdesign.co.uk/help/wordpress-content-updates/ and https://wordpress.com/support/wordpress-editor/links/

#TopTip: I like to have 2 tabs open in the browser for this – one for media and one for the page or post you are updating. This makes things much easier!


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