Post updated from March 11, 2013.
“PDF” stands for Portable Document Format – a file format that can be easily uploaded and downloaded from your website. PDFs are usually uneditable although you can create fillable PDFs. They are easy to print and share. That’s why they’re so widely used online.
The File Block
It has always been easy to add a PDF file to WordPress. With the block editor, it has become even easier.
Just follow these step-by-step instructions to add a PDF to your WordPress site.
- In a post or page, select the File Block under Common Blocks.
- Click Upload (locate your PDF on your computer and Click Open) or select the file from the Media Library if you have already uploaded it.
- In attachment details in the sidebar, edit the title. The “Title” is the text that will be displayed by default as the link text on your page
- Click select and the PDF will be added to the block.
- Edit the link text that displays next to the download button
- In the right sidebar of the page or post screen, find “Text Link Settings” and confirm that it is set to “link to media file”
- Set the link to open in a new tab.
- You can turn on or off an option to include a Download button next to the title of the PDF.
A link to the PDF file will be inserted into the page content. When a site visitor clicks on the link the file will open in Adobe Acrobat.
The block editor has slightly changed the way that you add a PDF for your site. But we think that adding the download button is a great addition for your readers.
If these instructions weren’t quite what you were looking for, check out this lengthy list of WordPress PDF plugins
Thanks for the post – I was wondering how to do this! I got around it by using my lightbox plug-in, but I wasn’t happy with the way it looked. Now my PDF looks awesome!
Hi this is great wondering how you can make that link a download but also capture data (customer email) before they can access the download?
Like a lead magnet?
thanks
Hi Rachel, There are a number of ways to do this. What we have done is use the MailMunch plugin with Mailchimp. When the subscribe box is completed there is a redirect to take people to the page with the download, an email is also sent to them with the download.