Creating a public access folder for files and link to that folder

You should be able to publish the direct link to the media library items. Depending on how you setup your system, the pdf files are usually stored in:
https://domain.com/wp-content/uploads/yyyy/mm/file.pdf
where domain.com is your domain, yyyy is the year you uploaded the file, mm is the month you uploaded the file, and of course file.pdf if the file name.

You can also get this path by clicking on the file in media library. The dialog that is displayed usually has a url, which conforms to your settings. Just copy that url displayed, and you should be good.

Hope this helps

jc62. First I want to thank you so much for taking the time to help me. It is greatly appreciated.

I totally agree with what you said and that should work. But it does not. The file is in the location you said but when I past the below URL in I get a message that the page is not found. I am not sure why WordPress is looking for a page when this is a pdf file. Here is the link, you can see for yourself that it does not work.

https://orlandocameraclub.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/occ-newsletter_feb_2016.pdf

jc62 Thank you so much for your response and trying to help me. I totally agree that this should work. But it does not. I get a WordPress response that the page is not found. Not sure when the file in the URL is not a page. Here is the link that you can try to see what I am getting.

jc62. Thank you for your help but sadly this does not work. Here is the link to try it yourself.

“https://orlandocameraclub.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/occ-newsletter_feb_2016.pdf”

Hmmm, I am wondering if the Orbisius CyberStore is restricting the access to your pdf files. Google has indexed the site, and was able to see several newsletters with the following search at google: https://www.google.com/#q=site:orlandocameraclub.com+newsletter, and looks like the indexing stopped after october 2015. Did something change in November ?

jc62, thank you again and great suggestion. However, I deactivated the plug-in and that did not resolve the issue. To answer your question what happened in November we terminated our hosting and switched to the new current WordPress site that I built an GoDaddy.com

But the problem seems to not be a WordPress issue. I have tried to create a folder on our hosting site in the same directory as the HTML and WordPress resides. I set the folder access to Public and Read Execute permissions. I then try to url directly and the same issue occurs. I had contacted GoDaddy technical support and they say this is a WordPress issue. So I am trapped in the middle and really need to have a way of linking the PDF to an email because we are holding up our newsletter from going out.

Well, not sure how to resolve the issue within your wordpress site. I think still think there is something or some setting that is not allowing access to your media files directly.

I know the direct link works with our site. Here is an example to a pdf on our site: LINK

A short term work around would be to put the pdf on a service like amazon S3, and send a link to the S3 file. I have done this with a newsletter I send out to a local group I am a member. Another work around might be able to create a sub domain such as xyz.orlandocameraclub.com, and just put the pdf files on that site.

If you have access to the web access logs, you might be able to identify the problem looking at the error log.

There must be something restricting access to your pdf files. I know a link to a media pdf does work on a site I maintain (LINK) . I think it is likely related to the CyberStore, or permissions on the goDaddy side. If you have access to the log files, have a look at the error log. It might provide additional information.

Work-Arounds: (1)Post your pdf to amazon S3, or similar CDN, and link to this path. (2)Create a subdomain, and post the files to the subdomain.

Sorry can’t be much help.

Problem has been resolved. The issue was a rule set in .htaccess file that was preventing PDF linked files from downloading or being displayed. The problem was with MemberPress plug-in. A great tool and I highly recommend it. Paul form MemberPress helped me solve the issue and I am now able to link to the files that I upload in WordPress. Yea.

Hey,

Never badmouth my plugins behind my back ??

If you find a bug do report it promptly.
We can’t fix a bug that we are not aware of.

Interesting idea about listing PDF files.

If you set the product price to 0 the CyberStore plugin will replace the Buy Now button with a Download button.

Maybe it’ll be a good idea to have a shortcode that lists all the free plugins that can be downloaded.

Slavi,
Orbisius