The Document Repository gives you a convenient, customizable way to share—and restrict access to—community files. From covenants to meeting minutes, you can upload just about anything here.
But you’ll get more out of the Document Repository with a full understanding of how some aspects of it work.
Duplicate filenames?
We store your documents in a cloud-based file system. Internally, it uses lengthy sequences of letters and numbers for filenames. One of the results of the ways that cloud-based file systems work is that unlike on your computer, you can store more than one file with the same name in the same Document Repository folder.
This also explains why if you edit a file to which you’ve linked in a text-based widget on your website, and then upload a revised copy of your document with the same filename, the link to your file no longer works. That’s because the link led to the previous version of the file, which is stored under a different name in the cloud.
Locally, you see the filenames you expect, but the system—which is responsible for storing millions of files—needs to use more-complex filenames behind the scenes.
File previews
In the Document Repository—and on a Documents-templated website page—you can preview specific types of files without having to download them.
These files include the following types:
GIF
JPEG
PNG
PDF
However, if you link to a PDF file within a text-based widget on a website page, you won’t be able to preview the document. Instead, the file will download to your device.
Note that you can upload animated GIF files to your Document Repository. The animation will preview—and you can use the Image tool in the toolbar above the edit window in any text-based website widget to add your animation to your website page. Animated GIFs do not, however, display their animation if you add them to a regular photo/image widget.
Now, some exceptions to this rule do exist for people who have configured their browsers to preview PDFs. For these folks, the files preview in the browser, but they also download.
You’ll note that some other relatively common file types are not on the list of files you can preview, including the output of applications such as Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, and Microsoft PowerPoint. These files use proprietary formats that our Document Repository can’t preview.
File uploads
As we discussed in the previous section, only specific file types will preview, and only in specific locations. You can upload other types of files to your Document Repository, even though they won’t preview. But one aspect of file uploads requires special attention, and that’s the size of the files you add.
You have access to an unlimited amount of storage space for the contents of your Document Repository and the other content you add to your site, but the limit on the size of any individual document is 15 MB.
For that reason, if you record videos of your board meetings or other events, you won’t be able to upload these videos to your Document Repository because they will be too large. Additionally, video files will not play natively on your website, so the best solution is to add the files to an account on a video service, such as YouTube or Vimeo, and then embed the files on your website. Text-based widgets include a tool just for this purpose: The “Embed media from external sites” tool, available from the toolbar above the edit window on a text-based website page widget in Site Setup.
Note that video services enable you to upload a video so it is not available to the public, and only people who have the link to the video itself can see it.
File-permission setups and changes
You already may know that you can set access permissions for folders and files within the Document Repository. Here’s what to remember about how to set those permissions—and how to change them later.
You can create a publicly accessible folder and still make a file within it accessible only to Members or only to people with a specific Member tag.
However, you cannot create a folder that is accessible only to Members or only to people with a specific tag, and then designate one or more files within that folder as publicly accessible.
The least-restrictive element must be the container (the folder).
The most-restrictive elements must be the content inside that container.
You also can create folders with access privileges that are just as restrictive as those for the files they contain.
Examples—
- Folder is set to be accessible to the public.
Files within it are a mixture of publicly accessible, restricted to logged-in Members, available only to people with a specific Member tag. - Folder is set to be accessible only to logged-in Members.
Files within it are a mixture of restricted to logged-in Members, available only to people with a specific Member tag, and available only to Admins. - Folder is set to be accessible to the public.
Files within it are publicly accessible. - Folder is set to be accessible only to Admins.
Files within it are set to be available only to Admins.
So we’ve established how the privilege system works. Now, let’s talk about how to change the privileges on existing files and folders.
The system is set up to stop you from creating a situation in which the container is more restrictive than its contents. Sometimes, that seems to get in the way of changing your Document Repository setup.
That’s because you need to make these changes in the proper sequence.
- Change the file privileges.
- Change the folder privileges.
And if your Document Repository setup involves folders with subfolders—or even sub-sub-folders—remember to start with the files in the innermost folder.
Folder > Subfolder > Sub-subfolder > Files
Once you change the permissions for those innermost files, you can change the permissions for the folder that contains them. Next, you can work on the permissions for the files in the Subfolder, and then the Subfolder permissions, and so on.
If you miss a file or subfolder, you’ll get a warning from the system about the next change you try to make.