Publishing Online

[Thomas24720605yzjl]

I publish a school newspaper using In Design, we send it out to be printed.  I am curious about the Publishing Online feature of In Design:

1) Where is the online published file hosted?

2)  Could I put a URL to the online file on the school website and would it be accessible to everyone?

3)  Pros and Cons of doing this?

Thanks in advance

Tom in Washington state

[Derek Cross]

The document is hosted by Adobe.

Yes, you can circulate a link.

It's easy to do from your print version – try it and experiment, you can add links, animations, multi-media content and more!  You can even enable it so readers can download a (static) PDF version for them to keep and print out.
The only disadvantage is that readers have to be online and you can't monetise it.

[Thomas24720605yzjl]

Thanks so much! That really helps. The last thing I thought of is can someone alter the content of the PDF if they download it or while it is hosted online? That would be the greatest liability for us if someone was able to alter the PDF.

Thanks so much for your quick response!
Tom

[Jeffrey_Smith]

The online PDF cannot be altered, but changes can be made to the Indesign doc, then published again replacing the online document. Anyone with access to the Indesign document and the CC account that published the document could change content as well as the downloadable PDF.

[Thomas24720605yzjl]

Hi Jeffrey

Sorry to be bothering you again (I learned how to type on a manual Royal typewriter lol so the world of technology often baffles me) 😊

As long as I keep ownership of the original InDesign document only to myself and my editors, and no one else has access to it, then the published PDF would be safe from tinkering? Want to make sure we don’t get into a libel issue or have some high school kids express their adolescence 😊

Thanks
Tom

[BobLevine]

If you don't want it altered, don't put it on the internet!

[Jeffrey_Smith]

Yes, the Online Publish document and the associated downloadable PDF are safe in the sense that no one can alter the files hosted on the Adobe server, at least without extreme hacking.

Bob's comments are related to the PDF itself. If made available for download, then there is nothing stopping a person from easily opening and changing content, then distributing through other means. Perhaps the better choice is to not make a PDF available for download at all.

[BobLevine]

Good point on that. Yes, the files on Adobe's server are about as secure as you're going to get but once downloaded, all bets are off.

[Jeffrey_Smith]

So we are on the same page, a Publish Online document can have a PDF download enabled or disabled. The file shown below allows visitors to download a PDF.

[BobLevine]

There is no way to secure that PDF. Anyone with Acrobat or any other PDF editing tool would be able to make changes. Even with strict security settings, many third-party PDF won't honor it.

[Jeffrey_Smith]

Another way to present an Publish Online document is using the embed code. This is an iframe code that allows you to place directly on your own website/page.

[Diane Burns]

To add to others' comments here, I thought you might enjoy these examples of interactive documents produced using InDesign and Publish Online: http://bit.ly/PubOnCollection

[Jeffrey_Smith]

The "Con" I hear from clients about Publish Online files: there is no text search function. This is not a deal breaker with many projects, but it has been for some.