Media downloads need to be easier to create

[denny_cave]

I work with several government agencies and non-profits, both of which generate tremendous amounts of PDF documentation that needs to be made available for download. Using the media downloads as it's designed now works like this:

• Start creating a page. Realize you need to upload a document to the page.
• Go to media downloads.
• Go find the file on your hard drive and note the name of it
• Come back to media downloads, type in the name of the document
• Choose the file format of the document
• Save the media download item
• Upload the actual file for the media download
• Go back to the page you started creating
• Add a link, search for media download to insert

At the very least this process needs to be able to happen inside of the webpage editor in a modal window (similar to image manager). Ideally it'd also be simplified like this:

• Choose file you want to upload
• Title & file-type are automatically filled in for you, with the option to modify both
• Save & insert

WordPress does this, LightCMS can handle it, and so does almost everyone else - so why can't Adobe figure it out? I know literature/media items are a little more advanced (limiting access, tracking stats, etc) than simply uploading a file in WordPress, but I think it's high time that this process was streamlined.

[smitchell80]

Hi denny_cave,

Thanks for you share and I'll pass this up onto our product team to review as a possible future enhancement. 

Please also include your suggestion to our wishlist as well.

- http://www.businesscatalyst.com/wish-list/list-public

Kind regards,

-Sidney

[Guest]

Same here. We just started with a client that has over 150 media downloads. My boss and I just had a half hour search of BC, with appropriate cussing, and found no way to FTP media into the Media Download module. Nor could we find where BC stores the media files we did manually.

Any help? Anyone? Beuller?

[smitchell80]

Hi,

Sorry to hear about your troubles thus far.

Unfortunately there are no bulk upload feature for media files and you can only access the files individually in the site admin under each respective media item details. 

As mentioned above please add to our wishlist as an enhancement request. 

Kind regards,

-Sidney

[ManOfLeisure77]

Have there been any developments in this? Has the product team looked into this as an enhancement? Like denny_cave, I too work for a non-profit agency, and the bulk of our content is links to documents such as PDFs. The Media Downloads module isn't very helpful because it quickly gets difficult to manage since we upload around 15 documents a week. And on Committee Day, forget about it. Instead, we took the old fashioned approach and created a directory via FTP that we call "documents", and then we created various sub-directories within that directory to organize the files.

This is actually the one feature that is making us think twice about migrating our main website to BC. It is interesting that Adobe - the home of Acrobat - a household name of PDF reading and creating - hasn't pushed BC to enhance it's document management capabilities.

It would be nice to see something that would allow you to:

• Upload multiple documents
• Organize the documents in directories
• Tag the documents
• Optional meta-data input for each document listing
• Access this via the ICE
• Assign permissions such as allow only to upload but not delete

[Liam Dilley]

Hold on for a bit longer, I think there is some movement on this.

Dont rely on it though, continue as is and hope for improvements soon.

[CarolinaCasual]

It would also be nice if the media downloads included a space to place an image of the item to be downloaded as well. Maybe it already does, but I have been unable to find out how to do this easily.