Social Media Hot Tub

The problem of how to embed a .pdf into a Wordpress page or post vexed me for a good long while. Finally, I’ve come upon the solution. Maybe this short tutorial will help you avoid similar vexation. If always, if you have a better way of doing things, please share with the rest of the class!

It’s so simple, but not intuitive. To the best of my knowledge this works with Wordpress 2.7 and newer versions.

In the dashboard, go to “Media,” then click “Add New.” From there, you can browse for the file on your computer – no need to upload the .pdf into your server’s root directory or anything, like silly me tried to do.

After you’ve hit “upload,” you should see the Media Library, with your new file at the top. Click the title of your new file, and you’ll be able to see the “file URL.” It’s where your file lives now. Highlight the address and copy it to the clipboard.

Then, in your post or page, whatever you’re working on, you can make a link from text or a photo to your pdf’s new place of business. In visual mode, simply highlight the text you want to use to refer viewers to your pdf and click “Insert/edit link” or use the keyboard shortcut of Alt+Shift+A. Enter that saved pdf location into “Link URL.” In “Target” you can choose whether the pdf opens in a new window, or the same one.

Voila!

In html mode,  it will look something like this (the following is from my hubby’s stone masonry company blog, where I wanted to be able to allow folks to see his print brochure in pdf format. I linked the pdf’s URL to a photo of the front panel of the brochure. You can see it live here:

<a href=”http://elementalstoneandwaterworks.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/GreenBrochurea.pdf”><img style=”border: 0pt none; float:left; padding-top: 10px; padding-right:10px; padding-bottom:10px” title=”Brochure front panel” src=”http://elementalstoneandwaterworks.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/BrochureFrontPanelJPG.jpg” alt=”Brochure Front Panel” width=”214″ height=”479″ /></a>