How To Add Attachments To Your Posts (Hint: Drag and Drop)

Saturday, March 8, 2008

From time-to-time, you may need to upload non images with your posts. For example, a PDF attachment, or more frequently a MP3 podcast file.

With Zoundry Raven (ver 0.9.223+), this is easy as a drag and drop. The only requirement to accomplish this is that you must have a media storage setup that is capable of accepting large non-image files. The best option is to use a FTP based media storage as it can handle large files and it is efficient in uploading files (compared to xml-rpc).

The second option is to choose your blog's xml-rpc (e.g. WordPress). How ever, these do have limitations on file size. If you try to upload very large files (e.g. 8MB, depending on your server configuration), the server may not allow file uploads. These PHP based servers can be configured to support larger files. Please read this forum post for more details (thanks to David Leigh).

Media stores that are of Image type hosting sites will not work as these sites allow only images to be uploaded. Example of these include PicasaWeb, LiveJournal FotoBilder and ImageShack.

OK, now for the instructions. To upload and link files, there are two options:

  • Drag and drop the file from Windows Explorer into Raven's Designer (WYSIWYG editor). Raven will take care of the linking process.
  • Or, select the text you want to link and press Ctrl + L to bring up the Create Link dialog. From this dialog, press the File Browse button to find and select the file you need to attach.

During the publishing process, local files will be uploaded to the media store. Media files will automatically be marked as enclosures (rel=enclosure).

Labels: , ,