How to share many pdf files with our many customers?

June 11, 2012 12:18 PM

How to share many pdf files with our many customers?

My boss has tasked me with finding a software that will allow us to share a lot of pdf files with our customers. The preferred setup would run on on windows and could possible be hosted on an external web server. We are a a windows shop so IIS and MSSQL server is preferred.

We would need individual logins and passwords for each user, and each user would be in a group for each customer. These pdf files will contain mostly engineering drawings and things associated with those.

posted by monkey_toes to technology (6 answers total)

We're in the process of moving a large document repository to Kentico, which is costly, but Umbraco was one of the systems we were looking at, which may be up your alley.
posted by General Malaise at 12:33 PM on June 11, 2012

Could you just set up an FTP server?
posted by aganders3 at 12:34 PM on June 11, 2012

Unless you're leaving out something really weird, FTP is definitely the way to go. SFTP if you care about security.
posted by odinsdream at 12:51 PM on June 11, 2012 [1 favorite]

I you want different levels of membership, a CMS might be the way to go. ExpressionEngine is super easy to use but requires PHP so might not be the one you want.
posted by dawkins_7 at 5:51 PM on June 11, 2012 [1 favorite]

Well, we have an ftp server, but and there is always a but, the boss says we need an easier and "prettier" way of doing this.
posted by monkey_toes at 11:16 AM on June 12, 2012

No offense, but how involved is your boss in the workings of this project, other than being the boss? I mean, a lot of time, management gets it in their head that "It should look like this other site I saw" or "It needs more dancing hamsters!" or whatever... without any real regard for usability or the nuts and bolts of it. They just have it in their head that "it should look/feel like this", user experience be damned.

FTP ought to do everything you need (user / group-level permissions, quotas, etc.) and you've probably already got all the software installed that you need. Most FTP clients like FileZilla allow import/export of site profiles including user name & password, so it's not too hard to supply the customer with a download link for the FTP client of your choice, plus a pre-configured site profile. "Download and install this, click here to import this site profile, and you're done."

I run a quick-print shop and we deal with a lot of builders, engineers, and architects for blueprints. We have an FTP server set up for those who want to use it, and it hasn't given us a lick of trouble.
posted by xedrik at 3:26 PM on June 12, 2012