Adding download option to website

Question

Hi,

I have been roped in to help design a website for a local charity. I am currently a university student that has experience designing sites to good effect (Within university). I am comfortable using the relevant languages and packages. What I am not so sure about is hosting.

If I have a site that has a newsletter, for example. If I wanted the user to be able to download that newsletter, would I simply have that file uploaded somewhere on the hosting server and simply provide a link to that file?

Thanks

Answer 1

Yes. Although you might also wish to use a Content-Disposition HTTP header to ensure that the file gets saved rather than opened in the default application for whatever file type it uses.

Answer 2

Yeah, that's really all you have to do. The only thing is if its a file that the users browser will attempt to open then you need to force the download like David said, this would be the case for a pdf file, such as a newsletter like you said. And yes, to answer your other question, all hosting providers will support downloads like this.