Asset manager - file names changed

Hi everyone,

Probably I am overlooking something trivial, but I can’t figure it out.

I have uploaded two PDFs into the asset manager and linked them.
When I am trying to access or download the PDFs, the file name would change to include additional numbers and letters eg:

https://uploads-ssl.webflow.com/591cf6b7cdec772521925e0f/5a161127ca1ffe0001602bd6_GO171001%20-%20GoExplore%20Doctor%20Letter.pdf

How do I prevent webflow from adding the series of numbers/letters to the file name?

Cheers

Khoi


Here is my site Read-Only: [LINK](https://preview.webflow.com/preview/genome-one?preview=d43fdde734c2447ad9428d043745111a)
(how to share your site Read-Only link)

No spaces in the Name IE: “nameofdoc” or “name_of_doc” Spaces in names of files are replaced. I use _ for ever space when coding it applies here if you want full control of naming.

Hope this helps

Thanks Nathan. I am more concerned about the additions in front of the file name rather then the %20. When downloaded, the %20 won’t be included in the file name.

ah not to sure is web flow generating this?

yes, so it seems.

If you go into the asset manager, you’ll see the actual file name. However, if you click on the link, it will automatically generate the series of letters/numbers

So looking at the link I think it is about serving it up and where it is on the webflow data server but could be wrong. I am thinking there must be a way to override this but that being said if being hosted by them and being used in there Platform it may auto generate these server address. If this answers your question I think it has to do with unique address for for files of the same nature not ending up with same name confusions. They have cuthousands of PDF, JPG, PNG, so ya consider it an internal reference number to properly server up your file from the stack of PDF on hand at any given time of the day.

Without this sort of thing things could get real confusing fast. on there end of course this would be why you see the file name on your end as it just assigns the ref # when downloaded and pins it to it so it can be found. Servers file ALL PDF in there own folder computers are faster are data retrieval when files are housed in one folder say PDF in one and JPG in another. But lol am guessing please don’t take my word maybe someone else has some insite.

Hi :slight_smile: just want to clarify. When you upload an asset, you are uploading it to the Cloudfront CDN (content delivery network). Because of this, we name the file something unique by adding extra numbers/characters to the filename.

If you want to make sure that the filename isn’t automatically changed, you’ll need to use a third-party file hosting service like Google Drive or Dropbox.

Hope this helps

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That’s not a great UX. Any alternative to Drive or Dropbox that allow for PDFs to display as a full pages like on other websites?

I have noticed the same issue with my images. Does this effect SEO at all?

This is a poor implementation and very surprising. Why would we want to use this if the file name has tons of random characters behind it? For sure… @Olivier_Roth …bad UX. 100%.

1 Like

Agreed this is really archaic. When people download your images for inspiration or pin them, you don’t want a bunch of random crap preceding the file name. This doesn’t appear to affect SEO, thankfully. But it definitely negatively affects user experience in downloading, pinning and storing your images.

In 2021, kinda seems like a caveman approach to ensuring the file is unique. Is there a way to turn this off or put the code at the end of the name at least. Just something more elegant?

I would like to do something as simple as allow visitors to download a PDF brochure - but if the filename keeps changing it’s really confusing to end users.

Please upvote this issue here: Clean asset links: Host assets on a site's Custom | Webflow Wishlist

Just fallen foul of this and it’s a very poor implementation. If I have Document1.pdf I want the customer to download Document1.pdf not 326266872638263v3 8273_Document1.pdf. This is the implementation leaking into the user interface - you should have a logical name and a storage name. So now we are back to hosting our downloads on Google Drive.

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