WordPress® 24-Hour Trainer

Chapter 17. Adding Documents

It's often easier to make information available to visitors in the form of documents rather than trying to re-create the information on a web page. Plus, they have something to "take away" with all your contact information on it as well. So being able to upload and link to documents easily is important, and WordPress has that covered.

In this lesson I'm talking about the Add Media button of the Upload/Insert menu. While it can be used to upload any allowed media type other than images, video, and audio, it is most commonly used for documents.

Uploading and Inserting a Document

Unlike the case of video and audio, using the Upload/Insert function for documents is perfectly fine. In fact, the method is well suited to documents because having a simple link is exactly what you want. When someone clicks the link it causes the file to be downloaded, or in the case of PDFs, it will automatically appear in the most people's browsers.

I've created a Press Releases category in WordPress and I've created a post for a press release, so now I'm going to add the PDF of the press release. I begin by placing my cursor where I want the link to appear in my text. Then I click the document icon of the Upload/Insert menu and get the usual popup window tabs: From Computer, From URL, Gallery, and Media Library.

In this case I'm adding the PDF from my computer, so I go through the steps of selecting the file and clicking Upload, and when the upload is complete I get the options ...