PDF plugin won't work?

[SnowTao]

Hi y'all,
I just bought Zoom this morning! YAY!

I've downloaded the pdf plugin and unzipped it. Zoom can't find it (or it doesn't work or something). When I try to tell Zoom to also index pdfs, it says I have to download the plug-in. (Yes, I've re-started Zoom.)

Do I need to move the extracted files somewhere else besides the plugin folder?

Thanks for any help!
Elenor

[SnowTao]

Ah, got it.

I found a thread where it was suggested I try the whole plugin set. That seems to have worked, as they show up now in the right-side log pane.

[Ray]

Glad to hear you've got it working now.

To answer your original question, no, the plugin file only needs to be unzipped and copied to the "plugins" folder as described on this page.

You might need to be careful if you have multiple copies of Zoom installed (e.g. both V5.0 and V5.1), but otherwise it should work.

The 'complete plugins package' (available at the top of this page) will automatically determine the correct location for you, so that is why it might have worked when the former method didn't.

[SnowTao]

Well, I got it to recognize the pdf plugin... but....

It's not indexing them.

I have two folders with pdfs (only), one of which is a subfolder of the other. The first time I set Zoom up to index PDFs, it did do the parent folder (for which I gave it the password for the files), but couldn't do the subfolder's PDFs.

Perhaps, I thought, that was related to the fact that the subfolder PDFs did not have a password, and the parent folder's PDFs did. So I added the same password to all the subfolder's PDFs -- and now Zoom won't index EITHER folder.

Very confused. I'm up to page 48 in the User's Guide (yeah, I'm weird that way, I actually read 'em!) but the User's Guide stuff about plugins is the same stuff as in the help files (yeah, I read them too!).

Any ideas? How do I get Zoom to index the PDFs?

Elenor

[SnowTao]

Ah no -- it's a folder problem, not a pdf problem

It's indexing the pdfs in at least two subordinate folders, but also not two others.

Directory structure:

................ Main level directory (home pages and indexes)
-------V--------------- V------------------V ....... (sub-level folders)
Articles folder-------Handouts folder ----- Translations
----------------------- V
--------------------AIHA handouts folder

The PDFs in Articles are indexed (as are those is a peer folder called Translations). However the PDFs in the peer folder Handouts, and its subordinate folder, AIHA Handouts, are not being indexed.


The home page has links to all three folders, so the path... oh, wait; I've told it not to index the home page (which is mainly just links)...

No, that's not it either -- cause there are no files listed in the delete list.

Is there some special thing to direct Zoom to the folder Handouts and it's sub folder?

Elenor

(oh. p.s., I only just bought it today (Pro), so I only have the newest versions of everything.)

[Ray]

You'll have a better idea what's happening if you turn on 'Verbose mode' so you can see the Skip messages and the reasons why certain files or folders are being skipped over.

Are you using Offline mode or Spider mode? If you are using Offline Mode, there may be a folder permission issue.

If you are using Spider Mode, there are a multitude of possible reasons, but one common issue is that there are no legitimate HTML links to the files or documents you are expecting. Note that Javascript links are not spider friendly. See this FAQ:
Q. I am indexing with spider mode but it is not finding all the pages on my web site

You might also want to check if you "Skip pages" list contain an entry that might cause it to skip the folders/files in question.

If you can give us the URL to your website, we can take a look.

[SnowTao]

Thanks Ray, for the quick answer!

The website is www.psandman.com. I'll try Verbose. I'm spidering right now cause I don't have the local mirror set up (gotta remove admin files and etc.)

No Javascript; all the PDFs are linked off the home page (the start page) via two indexes to the parent folder and one to the subordinate folder. Many of them are also referenced in various files throughout the site. (It's essentially a huge library of documents, plain-old ({eye roll} tables-based) HTML (we're gearing up for the switch to CSS... I plead a slow client and a steep learning curve for me!). Plus the folders full of PDFs.

Well, oddly, this morning, it's indexing them fine, and...oops! I think I was not FTPing the settings.php file along with the others; I did that (actually followed the list of files to upload this time!) and now it's working.

Not sure why they wouldn't be indexed yesterday... Does it retain the password for PDFs from use to use?

Elenor

[Ray]

Not uploading the settings.php file will be a problem. All of the files listed at the end of indexing need to be uploaded. It is recommended to use the built-in FTP process in Zoom because it ensures this.

If you do not upload the file, you would have likely been using a mix of index files, with an older settings.php file alongside the new ZDAT files. This can cause the problem you describe, where additional files have been indexed but do not show up.

The passwords for PDF files should not be an issue. Having a password set, should still allow you to index PDF files which are not protected.