When searching for plugins to enable document sharing on your Elgg site, you may notice that there are few plugins that actually let you preview documents and those few that let you rely on external services, which might cause a privacy concern between your users. In this article, we will review ViewerJS plugin, which will let you display PDF files, text documents and presentations in site.Overview

ViewerJS is a script that lets you display documents. I decided to integrate ViewerJS in Elgg to enhance the document sharing experience. I would like to point out that this plugin uses few server resources, and will not slow down your site.

Features and Benefits of ViewerJS

ViewerJS comes with several features and provides with key benefits that will keep your server healthy. Just a few of these features are:

• Easy to use and deploy
• Allow real-time collaboration
• It is cross-platform
• Open Source. You can use it, share it, copy it, etc.
• Uses Open Document Standards

Getting Started

1. Download ViewerJS plugin for elgg

2. Upload and install the plugin. If you need assistance with uploading process, please read this article.

3. Log into your elgg network with your Administrator account. Open the Administration Dashboard, and go to menu “Configure -> Plugins“:

4. Find the WebODF Viewer for elgg and activate it:

5. Let’s configure which files you want to preview. Go to menu “Configure -> Settings -> WebODF Viewer for elgg“:

6. This plugin lets you choose if you want to preview Open Presentations, Text Documents, or PDF files. Set it up according to your needs and save your changes:

7. Lets check out how the plugin works. Previously I uploaded the following three files using the Core File Plugin:

• A PDF Document
• An ODF Presentation
• An ODF Text Document

The files are displayed better than expected! ViewerJS works flawlessly.

Note: Each ODF file complies with the Open Document Standardization.

8. With this plugin, document sharing and collaboration gets a boost in elgg. Any user can review a document without downloading it right on your elgg network. Even thought the previewing is done right on your server, it won’t slow down your site.

This concludes ViewerJS for Elgg

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Happy Hosting!

Rodolfo Hernandez