Are you looking for an efficient and scalable way of uploading PDF files to WordPress and displaying them on your website? In this tutorial, I'll take you through a step-by-step guide on how to add PDFs to WordPress and display them in a searchable library on your site.
While WordPress itself provides ways to upload PDFs to WordPress, not everyone knows how to use them. The built-in methods are also only suitable for displaying on PDF file at a time.
For sites that need to upload multiple PDFs, it's better to install a plugin that provides better ways to add PDF files to WordPress and display them in a searchable format on the front end.
Keep reading to learn how to use the Document Library Pro plugin to build simple or extensive WordPress PDF libraries. You'll discover how to:
The end result will look something like this:
Install Document Library Pro today and start adding and sharing documents - the easy way!
Before jumping into the step-by-step guide, let’s first answer this question:
PDFs are the perfect format to share files with your website visitors. That's because they work on any device, unlike other formats like Word or PowerPoint. As a result, it makes perfect sense to add PDFs to WordPress and display them on your website.
When we talk about how to upload PDF to WordPress, we need to make it clear where the PDFs will be stored. There are two options for this:
The benefits of uploading PDFs to WordPress are the same wherever you store them behind the scenes. The instructions in this tutorial for managing and displaying PDF files will work for both methods.
The only consideration is that if the PDFs are hosted elsewhere, the users won’t be able to see them in a lightbox or the PDF viewer. Lightbox preview is only possible when you upload PDFs to the WordPress Media Library, so your users will have to download the PDFs instead.
Now we've discovered the benefits of uploading PDF's to WordPress and where to store them, I'll tell you how to do it from start to finish.
We'll do it using t he Document Library Pro plugin. This robust WordPress PDF plugin comes with various features that can help you manage your PDF library in the most efficient way.
On top of making things more organized for admins, Document Library Pro gives you huge flexibility in how to list PDF files in the WordPress front end. You can choose from a structured table or an eye-catching grid layout for displaying the PDF's.
There are plenty of ways to structure the PDF library to make it easy to navigate. You can list the uploaded PDF's in a folder structure just like on your computer. The filter dropdowns and keyword search also make it easy to find PDFs in WordPress.
Here are some of the most useful benefits of the Document Library Pro plugin:
Here’s a real-life case study on how Document Library Pro helped a company upload and display PDFs in WordPress.
Before you can start setting up Document Library Pro, you need to purchase and download it. You can then install it:
Now you're all set! Next, we can start adding WordPress PDFs.
Before you can start uploading PDFs, I recommend that you use categories and tags to build a scalable structure for your WordPress PDFs.
Document categories work just like WordPress post categories. You can create a hierarchical structure for categories and subcategories depending on their nature.
To create a new category, follow these steps:
Restricting access: If you wish to restrict the category from certain users, you can use the Protected or Private visibility option. All subcategories and PDF files within the category will inherit the same protection. This option is powered by the Password Protected Categories plugin is designed to work alongside Document Library Pro. If you wish to use this feature, you can get the two plugin bundle for a discounted price.
Just like adding tags to blog posts, you can add tags to PDF uploads. You can then fetch the PDF or document files with the same tag or label. For example, you can add tags such as publisher, publish month, niche, interests, or anything else and display or embed PDF files with the same tags using the shortcode.
To add new tags for PDF files and other documents, follow these steps:
Additionally, if you want more control over your PDF library structure, you can create custom taxonomies to further group your PDFs. For example, you can use the built-in Author taxonomy to group the files with the name of document authors. You can also add a search function to make navigation easier.
Now once you have your categories and tags structure in place, you can start uploading WordPress PDFs to Document Library Pro.
There are five different ways you can upload PDFs to WordPress. All of them are pretty easy, and you can go with the method that works best for you:
Let’s check each method in more detail.
This method lets you upload a single PDF to your website at a time. Here’s how you can do it.
If you do not wish to upload PDFs to WordPress site, you can host it externally, such as Google Drive or Dropbox, and add a link to your document library. Here’s how you can do this:
Do keep in mind that if the file isn’t hosted on the website, your users won’t be able to preview it before downloading.
If you already have PDF files hosted on your website in the media library, you can follow this method to add them to the Document Library. Here’s how you can do this:
If you wish to upload multiple PDF files simultaneously, you can use the drag and drop method. Here’s how you can do this:
This is a slightly more advanced way of uploading PDFs to WordPress, but it's also the best for adding in bulk. It involves creating a CSV file containing all the details for multiple PDF files.
Here’s how you can use this approach:
You can use this sample CSV file to upload PDFs to WordPress easily. This is what the CSV file should look like:
Once you have your PDFs in your library, you can finally check them on the front end. This section will talk about how you can add a downloadable PDF to WordPress.
Document Library Pro creates a main document library page that lists all the documents in the library. To access this web page, go to Pages → Document Library page → View.
Alternatively, the plugin has a shortcode with various options for listing specific WordPress PDFs only. For example, if you want to display PDFs from the category ‘Fiction’ from the year 2023, you need to use this shortcode:
[doc_library doc_category="fiction" year="2023"]
International Arctic Research Center has multiple lists of PDFs on their website. To make this more organized and structured, IARC uses the shortcode feature to list different categories of WordPress PDFs on multiple pages.
They use it to list reports, academic publications, previous research activities, and case studies on different pages.
Each PDF table is accompanied by a quick search box and filter dropdowns to help the viewers find their desired documents.
Just like IARC, you too can take control over displaying PDFs on your website with the Document Library Pro plugin.
The Northeastern Region Model Railroad Association uses Document Library Pro to list multiple PDF files such as meeting minutes, monthly publications, and handbooks.
While they upload all PDFs to the WordPress Media Library, they are segmented with the help of PDF categories.
On the Documents page, NER has divided the WordPress PDFs into multiple categories. Users can sort the tables in ascending or descending order by clicking on the column headers. If they want to download multiple files, they can simply select the checkboxes and click the Download Selected Documents button.
Here's what NER had to say:
Just What I NeededThe decision to go with WordPress for my non-profit website required we find a good means of handling a LOT of documents of various types on multiple pages. I found that Document Library Pro excelled in table layout view using shortcodes. Configuring each table was easy. Shortcode documentation is outstanding. Table display is really fast.
Like NER Model Railroad Association, you can also set up Document Library Pro and upload PDFs to WordPress in no time. I'll tell you how to do that next.
So far, you've learned how to upload a PDF to WordPress using the Document Library Pro plugin. This is the best option if you want to list multiple PDF's on your WP site.
If you're wondering how to upload a PDF to WordPress without a plugin, then I'll tell you how to do that next. You don't need any WordPress PDF plugins for this.
Tip: If you're not using the Gutenberg block editor, then your chosen page builder plugin (e.g. Elementor or Divi Builder) will have a similar option. For example, when you're creating an Elementor PDF viewer then you need to use an Elementor shortcode block. It might have a different name in other page builders.
If you don't want to fully embed the PDF, then you can add it as a basic text link instead:
This will add the PDF as a normal text link in your WordPress page or post.
With the Document Library Pro plugin, you can easily upload, set up, and manage your PDF library in no time. Not just PDFs, you can host and manage other files such as images, videos, and audio files.
Install Document Library Pro today and start adding and sharing documents - the easy way!
I hope you found this tutorial useful. If you have any questions regarding this guide, please let me know in the comments section below!
