Suggestions for a Document Management plugin?
Our site has a section for documents: policies, forms, meeting minutes going back years. It had all been managed in our Joomla-based site using an extension called Documan. I am looking for a Wordpress equivalent that can:
- display documents in a hierarchy, like an Explorer tree (Minutes/Year/Month for example)
- allow for batch uploading
- allow open access to some documents and protected access to others
- be simple and efficient to use, both for those uploading documents and those reviewing them.
Right now I am looking at Memphis Documents Library, but it seems to cause a problem with the theme background that I have experience with other plugins (the white layer goes away, so that the dark blue background covers most of the page and content displays poorly.) Thanks for any pointers anyone might have.
Comments (2)
Spmeone named Bryan wrote: Jim --
I am no expert on Document Management, but I, too, was curious, and found a number of web pages that might be useful to your search:
http://www.wpmayor.com/best-document-file-management-plugins-wordpress/
https://www.reddit.com/r/Wordpress/comments/3aqdqk/moving_from_joomla_do...
https://www.404techsupport.com/2011/03/integrating-a-file-browser-into-a...
http://www.fredericgilles.net/fg-joomla-to-wordpress/docman/
http://www.wpbeginner.com/plugins/how-to-use-wordpress-for-document-mana...
I hope they help!
Jim replied: Thanks for the tips, Bryan.
After reading reviews of many plugins and woefully inadequate "documentation" (which seems endemic to Wordpress plugins, even some paid ones) I have begun to experiment with two: Wordpress Downloads Manager and Memphis Documents Library.
Both, alas, seem to have the side effect of making the main nav drop-downs non-functional. Until I find if there is a way around this there is not much point.
After buying both FG Joomla to Wordpress Premium and the "Docman add on" and several rounds of communication with M. Gilles, I have decided that this route is not useful. What comes over at best is a mass of file links attached to posts or pages, something more clearly handled with FTP.
In WordPress Download Manager settings I was able to get past the drop-down menu glitch by turning off Bootstrap (not globally; the problem seems to have been an issue about the order of how things load.)
So far it seems cumbersome, at least in the free version, and does nothing like what Documan in Joomla did: replicate on a Wordpress page the good old hierarchy familiar from Windows Explorer. I tried an add-on that pulls in files from Dropbox, but the end-user display is the same overkill and the process equally tedious.
It seems strange to be having such difficulties replicating the functionality of something as ancient as Windows Explorer: showing icons for folders inside of which are icons for either other folders or lists of documents. I will next try WP-dTree.
After many false starts I decided to spend $29 on a plugin called Out-of-the-Box which enables users to browse a Dropbox folder inside a Wordpress page, open the first page of the document in a Lightbox and download. It works best for .pdfs, but for various reasons we're putting all our documents in that format anyway. This approach works fine and greatly simplifies the work of the volunteer who manages the files.
KatieKeith wrote: If you're having problems with document library WordPress plugins then <a href="https://barn2.co.uk/wordpress-products/posts-table-pro/">Posts Table Pro</a> is a good alternative. You can add each document as a separate post (or you could create a 'Documents' custom post type to store the documents separately from your other content). Post Table Pro will automatically display all your documents in a table so that people can click through to view more information and download the full document. A lot of people use this as an easy way to create a document library in WordPress.
Jim replied: Thanks for the suggestion, @katiekieth.
Since my last post ten months ago, we stopped using Out-of-the-box and switched to another plugin that relies on DropBox: Blighty Explorer. It was an improvement, but still not an ideal solution.
Hi Jim, I'm Katie from Barn2 plugins.
I thought I'd add to this thread to let you know that we have recently released a purpose-built document management plugin - Document Library Pro. This has everything that people love about our more generic Posts Table Pro plugin, along with lots of other features to make it easier to add and manage documents.
I hope you like it!