SW Neighborhoods, Inc. Empowering Citizens since 1978

To attach files (e.g. PDF’s, graphics, etc.) to your web pages, you must upload them to our system. To do that you need a user account and elevated privileges. The elevated privileges requirement is a security measure to protect the site against malicious attack by unknown parties. If you would like these privileges, please contact the webmaster with a short request, including your intended uses of this site. Please Note: Adding images to your web pages differs somewhat from merely attaching files for download, so there is a separate FAQ on inserting images into your web pages.

To attach a file for downloading (assuming you already have elevated privileges), these are the steps to follow:

1. Create or edit a web page
2. Upload (i.e. attach) the file(s)
3. Optionally refer to the link in the attachments box
4. Optionally add an inline link to the file, if so desired
5. Submit (i.e. publish) the page

Detailed Instructions

To make a file available for download, you can attach it to an existing page (by editing the page), or create a new web page (see “A Primer on Creating Web Pages” if you don’t know how to do this.) Next you must upload (i.e. attach) your file(s) using the attachments dialog box (see image on the right).

Click “Choose File” to select a file to upload. [Note: this button may be labled “Browse” or something similar, depending on your browser.] Then click “Attach” to mark the file for uploading. (It won’t actually be uploaded until you submit the page for publication.) Repeat this two-step process if you wish to upload more than one file or image. The image below shows the dialog with some files attached. In this example all the files happen to be image files, but they could be a mix of any filetype(s); the procedure is the same.

Notice the “List” checkbox? That’s to display a list of downloadable files in an attachments box at the end of your page, which would look something like this:

For most files (except image files), this is probably what you want. You might want to mention the link in the attachments box in the text of your page. In many cases, this may be all you want/need. If so, then you are done. In some cases, however, you may wish to add a link inline in your text, or may not want the file to show up in the attachments box. You control whether the file shows up in the attachments box simply by selecting or deselecting the “List” checkbox. And you can add an inline link to the file independently of whether or not it is shown in the attachments box.

Note: If you mark for upload a file which you later decide you’d really rather omit, check the “Delete” checkbox. The file won’t be removed from the list, however the file will not be uploaded when you go to publish the page. (If you are editing a page in which a file has already been uploaded, the file will be deleted from the server once you publish the page.)

Inline Links

To add an inline link for attached files, you can use the Rich Text editor, or do things the HTML way with this tag: <a href="path to file">link text</a>, where “path to file” is replaced with a path to your attached file, and “link text” is the text of your link.†

The path to the file usually consists of “/CMS-Uploads/” plus the filename. You may use spaces in the filename provided the filename is quoted. HTML specifications actually require that the filename be quoted. Because many browsers are forgiving if it isn’t quoted, some people fall into the bad habit of omitting them.

For example, with a file named “August Newsletter.pdf” the path should be:

<a href="/CMS-Uploads/August Newsletter.pdf">

The closing link tag would look like this:

</a>