Does anyone know of examples of major sites that will allow uploading of docs files to there system, I am thinking of allowing this upload but I'm worried about the posibility of users uploading viruses.
I'm worried that someone uploading a virus to the site could affect it's reputation.
Should I just allow pdf's instead or have to have some form of on server virus scanner (is there a hosting based clam-av solution available)
The most famous sites are:
Google, for exmaple, do have antivirus on it's server side. Generally when you upload any file to Google it is checked by antivirus. Google also converts doc-files to it's internal representation. After this convertation document does not contain macros anymore. Google has its own policy for potentially dangerous formats, for example executable files (exe's). It simply doesn't allow you to send such files by email because they are potentially dangerous.
I would recommend you to do as Google does - upload files in original format (doc) if users work with them and than convert them to safe format, such as pdf. Pdf format is more general in the Internet than doc.
If you have strong reasons to store doc files, that you better choose Microsoft Office 2010 with it's docx format witch is macro-free, and also Microsoft Office 2010 has special behaviour for documents received from the Internet.