<p>I'm not familiar with Docman (or Joomla for that matter), but I think Craft is perfectly capable of doing what you're describing.</p>

<p>Your strategy of creating an entry per PDF seems reasonable.  Entries get custom fields (of course) and revisions and you can use Entry Types to display them in the various formats that you require.</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-12-12T10:00:00.620Z
+1 to Brad's answer; I recently worked on a site that had in excess of 400 downloads. We did the same as you have in mind; we created a Downloads channel, so each download was it's own entry. This meant we could very nicely add categories and related entries fields to the downloads for extra functionality. Craft is perfectly suited for a job like this!
Jamie Wade
CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-12-14T08:19:19.937Z
Thanks for the answer Brad and comment Jamie. I'll progress things that way then. I've had second thoughts about adding the date into the document filename though - if a document is updated the URL should stay the same I think - I'll have to find some other way to handle revision on the asset files.
Jack McKenzie
CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-12-12T04:54:35.010Z
2014-12-12T04:54:35.010Z
Brad Bell
<p>I'm rebuilding the main website for a small rural local council, and at this stage I am planning on using Craft. The main issue I have is around the management of several hundred PDF documents which fall into different categories (agendas, minutes, policies and a lot a paper-based forms). The current system uses Docman in Joomla, so I need to come up with something equal of better.</p>

<p>At this stage my thinking is to create channel entries for each document with a number of metadata fields which would include categories and possibly tags. Each document would be named with a date included to facilitate some level of revision history (requirement by law). I need to present the documents in various ways. Sometimes there will just be links on a webpage, and in other cases I would need to auto-generate an index (e.g. meeting minutes) for a category.</p>

<p>So, am I going in the right direction, or can someone point me down another road, or try and divert me away from Craft altogether if it is not yet suitable to do the job?  I realise I may not be asking the right sort of StackExchange question, so happy to take advice to make it specific enough to meet any criteria.</p>

<p>(An alternative might be to see if I can extract some sort of feed from Sharepoint which the council uses as a basis for it's intranet. That would have to be a separate question though.)</p>

<assets><assetfilemodel>
Management of large number of downloadable PDFs
# Management of large number of downloadable PDFs

(Asked by: username_0 on 2014-12-11)

I'm rebuilding the main website for a small rural local council, and at this stage I am planning on using Craft. The main issue I have is around the management of several hundred PDF documents which fall into different categories (agendas, minutes, policies and a lot a paper-based forms). The current system uses Docman in Joomla, so I need to come up with something equal of better.

At this stage my thinking is to create channel entries for each document with a number of metadata fields which would include categories and possibly tags. Each document would be named with a date included to facilitate some level of revision history (requirement by law). I need to present the documents in various ways. Sometimes there will just be links on a webpage, and in other cases I would need to auto-generate an index (e.g. meeting minutes) for a category.

So, am I going in the right direction, or can someone point me down another road, or try and divert me away from Craft altogether if it is not yet suitable to do the job? I realise I may not be asking the right sort of StackExchange question, so happy to take advice to make it specific enough to meet any criteria.

(An alternative might be to see if I can extract some sort of feed from Sharepoint which the council uses as a basis for it's intranet. That would have to be a separate question though.)

**Tags:** assets, assetfilemodel

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## 1 answers

### Answer by username_1 on 2014-12-12. Score: 5 | Accepted answer

I'm not familiar with Docman (or Joomla for that matter), but I think Craft is perfectly capable of doing what you're describing.

Your strategy of creating an entry per PDF seems reasonable. Entries get custom fields (of course) and revisions and you can use Entry Types to display them in the various formats that you require.

> **Comments:**
> **username_2**: +1 to Brad's answer; I recently worked on a site that had in excess of 400 downloads. We did the same as you have in mind; we created a Downloads channel, so each download was it's own entry. This meant we could very nicely add categories and related entries fields to the downloads for extra functionality. Craft is perfectly suited for a job like this!  
> **username_0**: Thanks for the answer Brad and comment Jamie. I'll progress things that way then. I've had second thoughts about adding the date into the document filename though - if a document is updated the URL should stay the same I think - I'll have to find some other way to handle revision on the asset files.  

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