How to link to a specific Textkit PDF page

[Jeff Tirey]

Hi everyone,

We've made some changes to where and how we deliver our PDFs. You are now encouraged, in the forum only, to link to specific PDF pages as a convenient way to reference any single PDF page. Before linking, please read this entire thread to learn about some very important linking guidelines.

Here's how to link to a specific PDF page:
http://www.textkit.com/files/JWW_First_ ... f#page=232

And here's how to create the link:
1. First open the file within your browser from the file detail page like this one: http://www.textkit.com/learn/ID/105/author_id/39/

2. Next find the PDF page that you wish to link to. To create the link use the full URL and then add #page=PAGE-NUMBER like this:
http://www.textkit.com/files/JWW_First_ ... f#page=232


VERY IMPORTANT
If you wish to provide a link to the ENTIRE file and not just a single page, please do not link to any files directly. A direct link is any link that ends in .pdf like http://www.textkit.com/files/JWW_First_Greek_Book.pdf Just to be clear, it's ok to link to a specific page using a direct link to the PDF file, but any and all other links should be made to the file download page.

So if you want to link to A&G's New Latin Grammar and not to a specific page please note the correct method:
Correct link: http://www.textkit.com/learn/ID/109/author_id/42/
Incorrect link: http://www.textkit.com/files/AG_New_Latin_Grammar.pdf

There are many reasons why I don't like direct links to PDF Files. They mostly have to do with what happens when links are used outside of Textkit. There are also SEO implications.

Here are few reasons why direct links to Textkit PDF files are forbidden.

1. They produce broken links. We change servers and directory structures from time to time to keep up with site growth. I can't be certain that we'll always serve our PDF files from our /files directory but I can be certain that the file download page will always have the correct link - so that's the page to link to. You might have noticed that we recently renamed our page structure. This was so that our links can be independent from our current web technology. For example we use .php right now, but in the future we could change to a different file type. With our links formatted like this: http://www.textkit.com/learn/ID/109/author_id/42/ we can change server technologies without breaking links.

2. It denies visitors the chance to learn more about Textkit. We get many nice referrals from outside forums and email messages. It helps the new incoming visitors to find the file download page FIRST so that he or she can learn more about the file, see related files of interests and basically get an introduction to Textkit. We can't assume that everyone knows how to back out of a directory to the domain name with their browser.

3. It's poor SEO. Ok, so this might not be important to you, but it's very important to me. The explanation is a bit too long for this thread - but in a nutshell we want all links to our webpages and not to our PDF files.

4. It's harder (but not impossible) for me to tell which files are popular among Textkit visitors. When you download a PDF file through the download page, it'll log your download. This log is what's used to tabulate download results on the homepage. I use these longs to make future publishings decisions and learn more about what Textkit visitors are interested in. When you link directly to the PDF file, the logging script is by-passed. I Still know what's been downloaded through the server logs, but it does make it less convenient for me to understand what's popular. BTW, and not to digress too much here, I can't tell you how often visitors download the SAME file in a vain attempt at bumping their favorite files to the top of the list. Or they just do it to be a meanie. Trust me, it's a waste of time because the download script logs your IP address and only counts unique IP address within a relevant time frame towards download results. What the misguided visitor is actually doing is banging the server and wasting memory and expensive bandwidth. It's really not a nice thing to do at all on anyone's website.

OK, that was maybe a little more than you wanted to know about Textkit - thanks for getting through this lengthy message and have fun making direct links to Specific Pages of our PDF Files.