Okay, but it’s not working - and this is simple - so something isn’t right. Right?
If you want to PM me with your hosting account details I’d be happy to take a look. Entirely up to you of course.
Best wishes
Hi Stuart,
Not sure if I’ve sent you a PM or not, may be not.
Hi Stuart,
OK don’t think that PM worked.
If you go to my web site and go to ‘contact us’ you can send me an email from there.
Regards,
Neil.
@wheeltappersdccsound I had to go to work yesterday and this is my first opportunity to return. @kryten may have already sorted you out. All the previous suggestions are spot on. Once you get this working once, then you’ll be able to easily do it as many times as you want.
For right now I’m paying attention to one remark you made:
So really all I did was to change the name, BUT I did leave of the .pdf bit
I’m not quite sure what you meant by this, but the key is the final name of the zipped file that you use as a link needs to be EXACTLY the same as the actual zipped file. That means that this link:
http://www.wheeltappersdccsounds.co.uk/function_key_features.zip
and this link:
http://www.wheeltappersdccsounds.co.uk/function_key_features.pdf.zip
are two completely different paths. So if that PDF-bit remained in the name once you zipped it then you need to include it as part of your link path.
Hi Mathew,
Yes Kryten is having a look for me.
Not sure what I have done wrong but I’ve tried everything I know so a bit stuck now, fingers crossed.
Thank you.
Neil.
Hi Mathew,
I’ve managed to sort it.
When I looked at your email I noticed that it started with http:// and my address starts with ftp. so I tried that and it works.
So thanks to you and Kryten for you assistance and I think we got there in the end.
Just got to sort out the paypal issue now.
Thank you again.
Neil.
Congratulations! It will all be very easy from now on. It’s that first time that can be tricky.
Thanks Mathew,
Its always the same with me getting close but not close enough.
Thanks,
Neil.
Hi Mathew,
Worked out how to put the ziped pdf file onto the server in the right place and to link things together.
Everything was working fine and feeling smart with myself.
Then I found out I have another problem.
I’m hoping you have heard of this and have a cure.
Found that after I download the pdf file when on my website the file downloads OK but when I click on the zip file to open it, it changes into a pdf.zip.cpgz file then click on that and back to a pdf.zip file and just keeps looping.
I’ve tried everything I know to try and cure this but with no joy, do you have any idea whats going on?
Thanks,
Neil.
Suggest you take your original pdf file, Option-click it, choose compress file and name it something.zip
add it as a resource
link to this file in your page(s) using the resource macro or drag and drop the zip or reference the zip how you currently are.
If that doesn’t work then your host is doing something with zip files like compressing them with gzip on the server or something weird.
HTH
Brad
@wheeltappersdccsound If you share the link, or share the page to the link, then we can test it out. I never have a problem unzipping files/folders. So if I end up having a problem then there’s something weird going on at your server (per @Turtle). If we don’t have a problem then it seems to indicate something funky on your own machine setup, but not a general problem. Good to know which it is.
Hi Mathew,
A friend of mine does the testing for me as he’s on a pc.
He has the problem as well.
If I go to my server and click on the zip file in there it will download and I can open it OK so may be I’m putting something wrong in Rapidweaver?
Here is the web site www.wheeltappersdccsounds.co.uk if you go to info sheet and click on any or all the 'download pdf’s you will see what I mean.
Thank you,
Neil.
Hi Brad,
Yes I’ve tried’ Option-click and compress file as well as ‘stuff it’ same problem happens.
Not sure what you mean as add it as a resource?
Once its in the server I copy the file name i.e. irish_information.pdf.zip and then paste it on the corresponding page in ‘file name’ in Rapidweaver.
I thought everything was going well as well, these things are sent to try us well especially me.
Thank you.
Neil.
Neil,
(In your screengrab) the ‘Filename:’ field is for the name of the HTML page itself; so you should certainly remove the reference to the zip from there. Let RW suggest as you create an HTML file, or name it yourself - e.g. PDFs.html.
As far as I can see (and forgive me for jumping in here), the coding on the page is almost correct (though not 100% sure about how you’ve died the path to the zip (namely ‘…’, i.e. up a directory) - but it seems to work.
When I click on the link, Safari downloads the zipped file, e.g. ‘Locomotive_terminology.zip’.
I believe it’s the way it’s been zipped that’s not quite right yet. When I double click on it after downloading, it expands into another compressed format (cpgz), that into a zip, and the zip also into the zip etc. Perhaps this?
I’d suggest that all you need to do - if you don’t want them just to be able to download and view a PDF directly - is right/CTRL-single click on the file in the Finder and select the "Compress " option once. That will create a zip in the same location (as the PDF). Put that file on the server and refer to it almost as you have, e.g:
<a href="../styled-15/Function_key_features.zip">Download function key features</a>
I think the Title field may be leading you astray.
Even more ideal (though I don’t want to mix my advice with other given here), I believe, would be to create a folder on the server, called, say ‘pdfs’ and put all the correctly-zipped PDFs there. That would make it possible to code the hrefs thus:
<a href="pdfs/Function_key_features.zip">Download function key features</a>
Observing case (‘pdf’ not ‘PDF’) for directory and file names is essential. Good luck!
1 Like
Hi Mathew,
I can grasp most of what you have said.
I’ve tried a few ways to zip the file including ‘control click and choose compress file’ and I’ve tried ‘stuff it’ as well.
On the ‘file name’ what I did was to go to my server and in the folder/file named ‘styled-18’ I removed the ‘html’ file and replaced it with the zip file, may be this is wrong?
The looping from zip to cpgz I still can’t get out of it and tried both ‘terminal’ and the ‘Unarchiver’ as well but they can’t open it either and its not ideal for someone that downloads the file to start messing to open it.
If I go to the server and click on the pdf file it will download and I can open it up OK so not sure what is happening between the server and Rapidweaver.
You mention ‘the title field’ where is this?
I was hoping this was not going to get to deep.
I’ll try a new folder and put everything in there but I’ll need to play as I’m not sure what I’m doing in there.
Bit of trial and error I’m farad.
Starting to get a bit late now so I’ll have another go tomorrow.
Thanks for the advice.
I’ll let you know how I get on or not.
Thanks,
Neil.
It might help if you told us what your hosting service was. I vaguely remember another person running into a similar problem sometime in the past year. They had done everything just fine but the way their hosting setup was established was such that this same phenomenon would happen of never unzipping. There was a solution, but I don’t remember what it was. I just know the basics of server configurations. (I use Chillidog so all my needs are met in spades, but a relatively small number of hosting services do some “funky” thinks that can be changed/fixed.)
Neil,
Generally - with respect to Matthew and his point about the server settings (which of course may indeed be interfering) - it’s pretty easy in RW to reference a (zip) file in a link so that it downloads via the browser and can be opened on the end-user’s local machine.
May I suggest:
1 - for the moment abandon the zip part of things… it really should not be necessary: downloading a PDF via the web is very standard and removes the need for the end user to have to decompress it
2 - create that directory and put PDFs in it via an ftp client
3 - reference them as: <a href="pdfs/Function_key_features.zip">Download function key features</a>, for example
And see whether you can get that to work.
Never change things on the server independently of RW!
If you’re asking me (perhaps not Matthew, as it’s late 
) about the Title Field, I’m sorry, I should have been clearer: it’s always best to let RW name your HTML pages and their folders - although best practice is to change them (in RW not ever on the server) to more meaningful names, such as InfoSheet and then infosheet.html for instance.
I may be wrong but I’m thinking that by setting the filename of a page to the name of the zip file that you want them to have access to and download (as I think I see in the screengrab), it’s become unnecessarily complicated.
Basically, you’ll have a page which displays as usual, called something like infosheet.html, and links (<a href=… … …> on that page to PDFs, which you have on your server inside the docroot (e.g. the ‘PDFs’ folder), which when clicked upon, instead of taking the user to another page, will download the PDFs.
Once you’ve got that working, then you can experiment with zipping the PDFs simply via the Finder before you put them onto the server to see whether there may be something there causing the zip to… misbehave.
This can also be done easily with these Stacks
https://stacks4stacks.com/embed/
Maybe one of them could save you time?
Good luck!
1 Like
Hi Mathew,
I’ve been having a play this morning and I put the pdf zipped files into resources.
Linked them and it seams to have worked so far so fingers crossed.
My hosting is ‘one.com’ so not sure what is going on when publishing between them.
Anyway it seams to be working at the moment and I’m hoping I don’t get any more problems but I’m sure I will, bit of a learning curve but getting there bit by bit.
Thanks for you input and help on this, its really appreciated.
Regards,
Neil.
Hi Mark,
Thank you for you time and input on this.
I seam to have got it working for the time being anyway.
I put the zipped files into resources and linked them to there.
I’ll see how it goes.
Bit of a learning curve for me but getting there.
Thanks for your time and input.
Regards,
Neil.