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Creating a Word or pdf download

If you're stuck trying to work out how to make a Word document or a pdf document downloadable for visitors to your Joomla website here's how to do it.

I shall assume you already have a word document or pdf document.  Put the document into a place on your computer where you will be able to find it later.  If you have a lot of files for download then it might be best to formulate a naming convention for your documents so the document names are easy to remember - you'll see why later.  An example of a naming convention might be "pdf_001.pdf", "pdf_002.pdf", "pdf_003.pdf" and so on.  Whatever the name of your document it might help to write it down for later use.

1) Upload your Document

To start the process of making your document downloadable you first need to upload the document to the Joomla content management system.  This will take the document from your computer and put it onto the host server from where your visitors will be able to download it.

So go login to the administrator or backend of your Joomla site at www.yoursite.com/administrator.

When you first login you will see the "Media Manager".  The Media Manager can also be found under the "Site" drop down menu at the top of your browser, or if you've upgraded to Joomla 1.6 or 1.7 then the Media Manager can now be found under the "Content" drop down menu.

Once you click through to Media Manager you will be presented with a new screen - on the left you will see a vertical column of folders on the right you will see a detailed view of the files and folders within the particular folder which is currently selected on the left.

The Media Manager is where we need to upload our Word or pdf document too.

It would be useful at this stage to make a separate folder to store your document in.

Making a new folder is a reasonably simple task.  In the Media Manager you will see a button which says "Create Folder", next to that button will be a box into which you can type the name of your new folder - don't use spaces in your name, make it memorable and you may want to write it down at this stage.  Call your folder "downloads", "pdfs" or "word_docs" or you might call it "pdfs_2012" if you want to be more specific.  Then click "Create Folder".

Your new folder will now appear in the left hand column and also will become one of the items in the right hand detailed files area.

Open your new folder by clicking it.  You should now have an empty area in the right hand area - all you should be able to see in this area is a green arrow, which takes you back to the folder you were previously in.

Now we can add our document to the Media Manager.

At the bottom of the page you can click on browse to find your document on your computer.

Then click upload.  The file will appear in your new folder.

That's it for uploading your document.

2) Make your Document Downloadable for Visitors to your Site

To enable your visitors to download your document you now just need to create a link to it from within an article or from wherever you want the download to appear.  You don't need to worry about anything else - your document name ends in .pdf, .doc or .docx so the visitors browser will know exactly what to do with it.

I'm going to assume you want to add your download to an article - if you want to add it to anything else then you probably already know enough to be able to figure out how to do it from the following : )

So next you need to go to your article manager by going to "Content / Article Manager" or if you are back in the control panel click on "Article Manager".

If you already have an article to which you want to add your downloadable file then simply reopen the article or if you need to create a new article then click on "New" in the Joomla toolbar at the top of your browser.  If you're feeling stuck read up on how to create a Joomla article here.

Creating the Link

If you've ever created a link to another page then creating a link to your document is exactly the same process apart from you are now linking to a media file on the server.

First of all you need something to attach your link too. This is normally text or it can be an image, e.g. you could make a bright shiny image saying "Download free money here" and then link the image to a document - of course you'd be lying about the money, but it would be interesting to see how many try : )

OK, back to the real world.  So you want to write some text to which you will attach your link.  If I had a document about how to get free money then I might make my link text "Download a document on how to get free money here".  Or I could type - "Document on how to get free money - Download Here", where the "Download Here" text is going to be the link text.  By the way the first of these options is better for Search Engine Optimisation, as the link text describes what's going to be downloaded.

To turn the text into an active link I need to highlight the text - so from the above I would select the text in bold.

In the toobar above your article content there is a link icon - click on this and a pop-up box will appear.

There will be a box for "Link Url" you now need to type the correct url (or link) into the box.

For your document it needs to start with "images" as this is the top folder into which we placed your document earlier. We then continue the url with your folder name followed by the document name plus its extension.  Don't forget the extension - "what's an extension"? I here you say - its the letters after a document name, eg .doc or .docx for a Word document or .pdf for a pdf.  Note: everything is case sensitive so be careful when typing.

Your url should end up looking something like this: images/your_new_folder_name/your_document_name.extension

Once you have added the link click the "insert" button - this will add the link to your highlighted text. If you're adding the link to an image then click the image, click the link icon and add your url as above.

If you're done with editing your article you can now "Save" the article using the buttons at the top of your browser. Your link won't be saved until you save the article.

Go and Check the link in your site.

You're Done!

Troubleshooting

Check the Url is correct - remember its case sensitive, it needs the extension and must link to the correct file in the correct folder.

You can check if the url is correct by inserting it after your domain name in the address bar of your browser - if its correct it should start the download process.

If you get any problems add them to the comments at the bottom of this page and I'll try to help you out.