Drop-in .pdfList
Honestly, .pdf documents are quite a PITA because your average customer will tell you that uploading a bunch of .pdf files to a web server is all it takes to create a web version of a newspaper. Plus, .pdf documents take forever to download and/or display in one’s browser, so you are not very likely to make your site visitors very happy. Still, you can at least try to present your .pdf documents in a half-decent way, with thumbnails and all. Which of course takes a lot of work, opening a .pdf and creating a thumbnail and uploading both of them to the server and inserting the thumbnail along with a link to a .pdf … and all over again for the next one.
Thanks to Andrew Rickmann of Huddersfield, West Yorkshire and his Fun With Plugins Wordpress plugin generator I created a Wordpress plugin to do the boring part. All you have to do is upload all .pdf files that belong to a particular post or page and plugin will do the rest of the job. Like this:
Or this: Welcome magazine .pdf archive. Drop-in .pdfList relies on ImageMagick to create thumbnails every time it encounters a new .pdf file and will inform admin (and admin only) of thumbnails created. You don’t have to worry about installing ImageMagick. If your web server runs on linux, ImageMagick is probably already installed.
Usage
Put [ drop_in_pdf ] shortcode, where you want your .pdf thumbnails to be.
Up to 3 thumbnails (or less, depending on number of .pdf documents associated with particular post) will be displayed. To display more than 3 thumbnails, use
[ drop_in_pdf num=x] shortcode, where x is number of thumbnail you wish to display
You can display .pdf thumbnails of another post as well, just use
[ drop_in_pdf id=x] shortcode, where x is ID of another post with .pdf ducuments
And yes: [ drop_in_pdf id=y num=x] works, too.
Download drop-in-pdflist.zip or click this beautiful icon below
I had to do it, didn’t I? Throw in .zip download thumbnail shortcode handler as well. Icon used is from Aqua Gloss Icons set found at Deziner Folio. To place automaticaly created .zip thumbnail download icon(s), put:
[ drop_in_zip] shortcode in place. To suck .zips from another post, use id shortcode parameter.
Drop-in .pdfList is not an extremely complex plugin, so there’s no need for user settings panel and admin interface. If provided inline overlaping thumbnail style and dimensions don’t suit your needs, you can still tweak user settings in drop_in_pdflist.php file. Have fun! I mean: Have fun! Or else …
December 7th, 2008 at 01:01
Sounds real good, and I could use this but … where’s the download link?
December 7th, 2008 at 09:31
I’m known to be cryptic sometimes, but when it says Download and then there’s this nice icon below and if you pass over with your mouse it says Download this … :-) Will try to make it more obvious, though.
December 7th, 2008 at 11:16
Looks like very usefull, but in my case the post with the code snippet doesn’t show a thumbnail, but only a message (in red), saying the thumbnail has been generated.
Any suggestions what I might be doing wrong?
December 7th, 2008 at 13:40
Thanks to Tibor, there’s now a check for ImageMagick, so if plugin does not work, you will know why. In the mean time, search for more alternatives to .pdf thumbnail creation is on.
December 7th, 2008 at 14:49
Thanks for responding but there’s no icon near the word “Download.” I use Firefox 2.x; could that be the reason?
December 7th, 2008 at 14:59
PS: I placed a screencapture of this page (as I seeit) at:
http://www.dogtrainersworkshop.com/transfer/no-download-icon.gif
December 7th, 2008 at 15:05
Oh, yes. I tried Internet Explorer, and the icon shows.
December 7th, 2008 at 17:02
Thanks, wasn’t even aware that the icon might not show in some browsers, let alone Firefox, which I use most of the time. I owe you one!
December 8th, 2008 at 07:38
[...] Drop-in PDFList takes your PDF and uses Imagemagick to create thumbnails of your attached PDF. All you have to do to use it is include the Quickcode in your post and the plugin handles the rest of the work. Uploading a PDF to a post gives the PDF that post number, allowing you to call PDFs from other posts with a simple Quicktag. [...]
December 8th, 2008 at 17:12
Great plugin idea! I usually have to do the process of making thumbs of my PDFs and it is just time consuming. I do have one question though. Is it possible to have a PHP template tag for the plugin. You can insert shortcode into a template directly.
Thanks,
Daniel
daniel@crucedesign.com
December 8th, 2008 at 18:02
Sorry, not yet. Will look into it.
December 12th, 2008 at 13:12
[...] Drop-in .pdfList [...]
December 13th, 2008 at 21:19
[...] Drop-in .pdfList [...]
December 15th, 2008 at 00:11
[...] brut digital art » Blog Archive » Drop-in .pdfList (tags: pdf plugins wp) [...]
February 1st, 2009 at 04:25
Hi! I was hoping you could help me. I am trying to use your plugin but it’s not working. The error shows that it’s trying to convert a pdf located at the relative path plus absolute path…. i.e. it’s adding one of them.. As a result, the plugin can’t find the pdf. I hope I explained that clearly. Any ideas? Please let me know. Thank you!
February 2nd, 2009 at 17:23
Thank you so much for your help! This plugin is AWESOME!!!!!!
Cheers!
May 6th, 2009 at 20:18
Hey, I’m trying to use the plugin, and it’s not properly generating the images. The site is currently hosted on bluehost – I was wondering where your site is hosted?
May 6th, 2009 at 21:04
It might be that your .pdf files are in CMYK (see this article). If that is the case, try to convert .pdf files to RGB before uploading.
May 13th, 2009 at 21:05
I’m able to convert the files by hand (ssh, using the convert command) – i was just looking for a hosting recommendation.
May 14th, 2009 at 06:41
can’t help you there as my hosting is kind of experimental, but I guess just about anything should do, even any of numerous free web hosting providers
August 14th, 2009 at 13:22
Hello,
I am using your plugin and its delivering the following error as it should when I am logged into my wordpress install:
ERROR, check for ImageMagick
Code: 127 | ERROR, check for ImageMagick
Code: 127 |
I can see the drop shadow file which is clickable for the pdf but there is no thumbnail
I have changed the convert path to ‘usr/bin/convert ‘ per my hosting company–dreamhost but that does not work either. any ideas?
August 14th, 2009 at 13:29
try to change path to ‘/usr/bin/convert ‘
August 14th, 2009 at 13:53
OK now i have:
ERROR, check for ImageMagick
Code: 1 | ERROR, check for ImageMagick
Code: 1 |
August 14th, 2009 at 16:01
Returning error 1 would suggest ImageMagick failed to convert your .pdf. Alas it doesn’t say why, but you might want to try another .pdf, just to confirm the theory (maybe one of those attached to this very post). As a last resort, you can create your thumbnail by hand, at least that is what I do when everything else fails …
November 11th, 2009 at 13:20
Great plugin, got everything working. But is there a way to automatically call the function in the loop? To include the thumbnails by default. Thanks
November 11th, 2009 at 14:05
not quite sure, what you mean. Could you elaborate a little ..
November 11th, 2009 at 14:10
I got it:
, i wasn’t aware of the do_shortcode function.
Thanks anyway, it’s working great also on wp 2.8.4
November 11th, 2009 at 14:12
I got it:
echo do_shortcode(‘[drop_in_pdf]‘); , i wasn’t aware of the do_shortcode function.
Thanks anyway, it’s working great also on wp 2.8.4
November 28th, 2009 at 01:44
thanks for this great plugin