Dropbox is slow to load PDF

[Roxzfr]

Share Link: https://preview.webflow.com/preview/megasteel?preview=90e1cde4bd5b3bbed6a63d4765b6cfaf

Hello, On the ‘Contact’ page of this website, if you scroll down to Warehouse locations, you can see there is an option to view the collection instructions Which are in PDF format. I have used Dropbox with the changed URL of dl.dropboxusercontent to hide Dropbox; however, my client says it is too slow to load and he would like it to appear as a ‘page’ with a print option. Is there anything I can do at me end or should I find a FTP host?

Many thanks in advance.

[vincent (Webflow Expert)]

my client says it is too slow

And they’re probably right, but Dropbox is not at all a CDN (a hosting server for live, hosted assets). Features to hotlink are for convenience, not hosting. I strongly suspect Dropbox to make such hotlink fail at least every once in a while, in order to prevent people to abuse the use of public links. You can find in Dropbox terms that you’re not allowed to use it as a CDN.

So any other hosting options will be better than this. you can set your own FTP server for cheap and that’s going to be convenient for your clients’ needs. Or you can use Amazon S3 or other CDNs. Also, the feature of hosting files in Webflow is asked for so often that it may come one day.

[Roxzfr]

Thank you Vincent, I will try the Amazon solution, and yes, I do hope we have this functionality soon, everything else is so easy

[Roxzfr]

Hi @vincent

I have created a S3 account and uploaded a document. I downloaded the document and copied the URL into link settings. It worked great the first time but now fails to load, have I done something wrong?

[vincent (Webflow Expert)]

Oh, I wouldn’t know… I’m not super experienced with S3, I opted to have my own servers I have S3 Backups on automatic but I’m sorry I can’t answer this specific question…

[Roxzfr]

No worries I’m sure I can sort it out - thank you for your help