Document URL Changes and Branding Issue on Webflow

Hey Community!

I’m facing a problem when uploading and downloading documents on Webflow, and I could really use your help to find a solution. Here’s what’s going on:

Issue: Whenever I upload a document to Webflow and generate a download link, the platform automatically changes the URL. This becomes problematic for me as I need to keep the same URL for my document consistently. It’s crucial for my workflow and for sharing the document with others without having to send new links every time I make an update.

Another concern is that the PDF URLs include “Webflow” in them, which I find a bit frustrating since I’m already a paying customer. I’d prefer to have a clean, professional-looking URL without any extra branding.

Thank you so much for taking the time to read this and for any assistance you can provide!

Currently there’s really nothing you can do about the way the files are named but you can remove the “Webflow” from the hosted URL by enabling website white-labeling — this changes the domain to assets.website-files.com but I agree that using the actual site domain would be preferred.

The Wishlist item below seems to cover exactly what you’re looking to do so I’d recommend throwing some support behind it in hopes the Webflow team fixes this behavior in the future:

https://wishlist.webflow.com/ideas/WEBFLOW-I-819

You can always look into hosting your files on a third-party CDN which would give you much more control over file naming and URL structure, but this would be separate from Webflow.

Good luck :+1:

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Thank you so much for your response. I hope Webflow can fix this issue as soon as possible because it’s really annoying that it changes the URL, which makes the business look a bit unprofessional in that regard. Do you recommend any third-party tools that can help control the URL from being changed?

My clients don’t typically have a use for that so I don’t have any preferences, but I’m sure most third-party CDNs would be capable as long as their within the budget for you and/or the client.

Hicham, depends on your use case specifics, however I usually use two configurations for this;

NETLIFY

  • Free for basic plan
  • Can assign a subdomain e.g. files.mydomain.com
  • Uploading is done through a ZIP deploy ( all files ), or Github repo sync, or probably FTP ( haven’t checked ).

But you get nice URLs like https://files.mydomain.com/pdfs/socrates1.pdf

GOOGLE DRIVE

If you’ll be editing these files often, and don’t mind the lengthy unbranded docs URLs, you can get consistency and a huge amount of admin flexibility. e.g. edit the doc, download it as PDF.

DROPBOX

For clients that favor it;

More notes;

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As usual @mikeyevin is spot on.

To add a bit more color to this…

Webflow isn’t designed to be a download file host. One of the things they are designed to be is a website host that creates snappy sites.

One of the ways they do this is by taking all the files you upload into the asset manager, as well as select fields within the CMS, and re-upload them to their global CDN - under their own domain and a hacked up filename.

This isn’t bad.

It’s part of the magic that delivers content fast by hosting those files in regions physically closest to your website visitor. Fast downloads.

This become a problem, as you’ve discovered, under your use-case.

There are some solutions depending upon your needs and skill level.

Easiest but may not solve the problem.

You can use the native Webflow file uploader, but it has the same problem AFAIK. If you host it under your own domain that may not be the case, worth exploring.

Easier but has limitations.

You can use sites like Microsoft OneDrive or Google Drive to host. These are easy solutions but they all have their own quarks and limitations that aren’t obvious until you need more than they offer.

You can use solutions made for this like Cloudinary - Pricing and Plans and https://uploadcare.com/pricing. They both have free & paid tiers. Both allow custom domains if you need it.

While these last two options have less limitations than the first two, limitations do still exist.

More difficult, but (essentially) no limitations.

You can use a free Amazon s3 account. This is probably the most difficult option, but it gives you the most flexibility.

Huge file size downloads, custom domains, easy way to either force the display of your file inline (within the browser) or force a download, etc… Removing limitations of those other options, with the negative side-effect that it’s more complicated to setup.

Hope that helps!

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