A save as PDF button on your site

Our core business is converting HTML to PDF and as such we deal with a lot of web site owners that want their visitors to be able to just click a link or button on their website and trust that they will get a PDF in return.

This functionality is called a save as PDF button or save as PDF link. The interesting thing is that although it’s quite easy for web sites to get such a button or link on their web site and – with a little help from our web site – to have it working perfectly, there’s quite a bit of technology behind it to make it work well.

So that brings us to a few questions, such as:

• Can I built that functionality myself?
• If I can’t build it myself – how do I get it?
• What kind of things can I do with it?
• Can I get a free save as PDF link for my website?

Of course there are many more questions, and we’ll be sure to cover those in another article, but let’s look at these first.

Can I built this functionality myself?

So you think you can dance built a HTML to PDF conversion tool, hum? Well, unfortunately it’s not as easy as it sounds.

You’ll need to first get a piece of conversion software that allows you to convert HTML to PDF. Now if you do a little Google search you’ll find quite a few alternatives, although the king of search engines will not immediately tell you which one will work for you and why. For that you’ll be searching some hours and maybe days more. You’ll then buy it – or download it for free.

Next you’ll be tuning that piece of conversion software and beat it into submission with countless commands and modifications to make sure it does what you want it to do. Cause maybe you didn’t hear this before, but no – none of them do what you want out of the box. And obviously you’ll be testing it, arrange power for it (in the form of expensive hosting) and then test it some more.

Finally you’ll built the interface between your ‘save as PDF’ button and your beautiful customized piece of conversion software. You’ll tweak it for all the specific needs you have and then you’ll start testing and testing again.

Does that sound like a nice little adventure? Well – actually for us it does, but we guess we’re not like most people. So the answer to the question is – yes, but it’s a major piece of work to do and to uphold.

So…

If I can’t build it myself – how do I get it?

This question is actually very easy to answer. We offer a great save as PDF service for your website that allows your visitors to save your webpages with one click. You can find all the information at our save as PDF information page.

What kind of things can I do with it?

When you use our save as PDF service you will get a whole lot of things with it that allow you to tweak the links to perfection and also use it for a variety of functions. You’re not restricted to just converting the page the visitors is looking at or just a few character sets. No – we offer support for the following:

• all major character sets like Asian, Arabic, Cyrillic and Western fonts
• all standard page formats like A0, A1, A2, A3, A4, letter, tabloid etc as well as custom page formats
• custom margins and a custom header and/or footer
• fitting a web page to a single page PDF
• conversion of any other URL on the same web site in the ‘save as PDF’ link

And we offer some other things as well. All these things can be tuned just by adding a parameter in the save as PDF link that you put on your website. Find more information in our save as PDF link page.

Obviously with all that greatness comes a price tag, although it’s a small one. If you want a free save as PDF link on your site, it brings us to the last question:

Can I get a free save as PDF link for my website?

The answer is a simple – YES. We offer that too. By just link your Save as PDF link to our homepage you’ll get that functionality.

Your link would look something like:

<a href="http://www.htm2pdf.co.uk">Save this page as PDF</a>

If your visitor arrives at our site we will detect the referring page (which is the page on your website) and we’ll convert it to PDF for you. Your visitor can then download it from our website.

The big differences between this free save as PDF functionality and the paid service are the following:

• your visitor will see our website with the free version
• you’ll not be able to customize any settings for the conversion with the free version

We’ll welcome you to the free version as much as to the paid service though. Please enjoy whichever service you prefer.