Thread: creating a button to link...

Hey guys and gurls.

I'm a little bit stuck and would apreciate any help, I have scoured about a quater of the forum for an answer as yet to find one.
I want to create a button on one of my subdomain pages that will allow a visitor to download a small pdf document file to their computer.
So far I have zipped and uploaded the pdf document that I want to use to my public html folder using FTP manager....at this point is where I get stuck, I can't seem to find a way to link a button to the file. in fact i'm completely lost....

I couldn't find a tutorial for this one!....might be an idea to help nubes like me out.

Many thanks
Max

Lets say your pdf file is called myfile. The to link to it you would create a link URL like so;
http://www.yourwebsite.com/myfile.pdf

Now- if you right click on a link like that and choose- "Save target as" then you could save it to your computer. If you simply click on it - it will open the pdf file. Once opened- then they could choose save file and save it to their computer.

So if you want to have a picture or a button represent the pdf file- simple make the link from that picture the same as above.

Hope that helps some.

Andy

Just a small addition to Andy's post: if , as you said, you have zipped the PDF, then the link should be http://www.yourwebsite.com/myfile.zip

However, in my experience, PDF files, when zipped, don't become any smaller (but then it also depends on the file content) so compare the zipped and unzipped versions. If the size is very similar, consider uploading directly the PDF and not zipping it. In that case the link should be as Andy suggested.

Thank you Andy and Naval, I think I get it now, you have both been a great help. keep up the good work.

many thanks
max
www.buyitnovv.con

Oh by the way I don't know if it's just me, but I had built my first page a while back and it was just a coming soon page. a couple of days ago I installed the new internet explorer 7, I thought I would check my website and guess what! all the images had moved out of place and the text has been jumbled up and font has changed also! I will be deleting the page soon so it dosn't matter that much, does this mean that I should now test my up coming website with explorer 6 and 7 as well as firefox and netscape to make sure that they work properly on all of them?
any comments or insight on this matter would be apreciated.

Yes- IE7 is chalk full of problems.

Andy

hi guys.

I have followed your advice and i'm still having a problem, I have created an image button and have put in the link to the pdf file which is located in my public html folder. this is how I have linked it:
www.buyitnovv.com/system.pdf
I have decided not to zip the file after all as its only 90kb in size

when clicking on the button I am getting a return message saying the file could not be found.

I have checked spelling and set the link as file://www.buyitnovv.com/system.pdf.html

i'm wondering if I need to add html to the end of .pdf when uploading the file to my public html?

The page the button is on is here: http://www.buyitnovv.com/system.html

Any help once again would be appreciated.

max

Your first link works fine.

Andy

Thanks Andy.
I must be linking the button wrong or its just not working with my browser? i'll keep testing...
like you say the first link works fine, however when I'm on the page and click the download button it still says file cannot be found
max

What page are you talking about? The first link opens up the pdf. By right clicking on it and choosing "save as" I can download it to my computer.

You would not link it like:
system.pdf.html

You need to publish the page in order to test it. It will not work in preview.

Andy

Andy
great news everything is fine with the world.... it works now. I just changed the link to htt:// instead of file:// and it works.

thanks for all your help. I couldn't have done it without it.

max

Good enough. Have a great Christmas /holiday season.

Andy