How To Add a .PDF File To Your Blog Post or Website

Once you've learned to add photos, embed video and audio files, create hyper-links and anchor text etc, inevitably you'll want to know how you can add a .pdf file to your Blog post.  An Adobe Acrobat .PDF (Portable Document Format) file is a document that typically cannot be edited and is usually created from an original document using the Adobe Acrobat software or similar application.  .PDF files can be viewed by downloading the FREE Adobe Acrobat Reader.

Adding a .PDF file to your Blog post can be done one of two ways.  You can upload the .PDF file to a host server on the Internet and simply create a link to it using the location URL or web address. IE: http://www.DomainName/DocumentName.pdf  The second way is to use a program or tool that creates an HTML embed code which you can add to your Blog post or website.

Scribd.com is a site that offers users a tool that lets you upload your .PDF document onto their server, then use their widget/player to embed the file into your Blog post or site.  The site is FREE and once you've signed up and registered, the process is fast and simple.  The benefits of embedding the .PDF file vs linking to it are that visitors and readers don't have to leave your post or site to access the shared PDF document.

How To Add a PDF File to Your ActiveRain Blog Post

1. Join Scribd.com and setup a Profile

2. Upload your .PDF file to Scribd.com

3. Click on the .PDF File you want to embed to Blog Post or Website

4. Copy the embed code from the "Share and Embed" Toolbox

*Notice the options to share on Facebook, Twitter, or Google Buzz
(You can also create a hyperlink to Anchor text using the Link/URL)

5. Place/Paste the HTML embed code on the HTML tab of your Blog Post.
The code can also be added to your website using your HTML page editor.

6. Save your post or page and you're done!

Here's a sample of a .PDF file I created a couple years ago here on ActiveRain.

As an Absolute Last Resort

One last option would be to take a "screen shot" or capture the PDF file as an image (if it all fits on your computer screen) and save it as a .jpg file, then you can add it as a photo or graphic to your Blog post. Unfortunately, even a single page PDF file is hard to display the entire page on a computer monitor or single screen. To capture any computer screen image, use the "Shift+Print Scr" keys on a PC, or the "Shift+Command+4" on a MAC to capture the image. You can always crop out what you don't want in the image using a photo or image editor like picnik.com or Adobe Photoshop. If you'd like a free photo or image editing software similar to Adobe Photoshop, check out Gimp.org.