Presentations, Powerpoint, and WordPress

By | February 8, 2015
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So you have to give a presentation or a lecture to a class or some meeting and you also have your blog.  Can these two be connected?  YES.  Here’s four different ways to integrate your Powerpoint presentation with your WordPress site.  These are listed in increasing order of sophistication and functionality.

 

 Option 1 – Link to download.

This is the simplest and easiest. It also provides the least functionality and integration.

How to:

  1. Create a Post or Page in WordPress where you readers to find the link.
  2.  Upload and Link.

    1. (self-host version)Using either the “Add Media” button from the Post/Page editor or the Media > Add New item in the Dashboard menu, upload your PowerPoint file to your WP Media Library.  Insert the file just like you would graphic into your post/page. Since it’s a PPT or PPTX file, WordPress can’t display it so it will instead create a link for readers to download.   –OR —
    2. (host the file elsewhere version).  Upload your file to Dropbox or Google Drive or some other Web-accessible file storage, change the settings to share it, and then copy the URL for the shared file.  Go back to the WordPress post/page editor for your post/page, type and highlight the name of your file or some other description you want to become a link, and then click the “Link” button in the editor toolbar. Paste in the URL for the shared file. Your description becomes a link that when clicked will allow readers to download the file.

As mentioned, this really easy. But it has a triple disadvantage. The presentation doesn’t actually display in WordPress, readers must download it and that means then must have compatible software installed locally (Powerpoint or LibreOffice).

Example:  Here’s a link to a Powerpoint file I shared using this method:

 

Option 2 – Embed a Presentation Hosted Elsewhere Using [Shortcodes]

A lot of people use web-based services like Scribd and SlideShare.

Note: I personally don’t but that’s because I simply prefer to have more control and ownership of my own data and files.  I don’t care for how such cloud services can change functionality with no notice or even take rights to your files. If Nonetheless, if you’re comfortable with them – and they do provide some additional reach and social functions – then go ahead and use them. My preference is for services that fully allow for creators to retain ownership and distribution rights as well as easy local backup for protection. It’s a Domain-of-One’s-Own thing.  If you want to embed a presentation, I suggest using either Slideonline.com or Google Drive.

How to for SlideShare and others (others are similar):

  1. Upload your files to your service.  You’ll need an account at the service such as SlideShare.
  2. If you’re on WordPress.com, then you can skip this step. You’re already set for the shortcodes.  If your WordPress site is a self-hosted (a wordpress.org version), then you’ll need to either install the plugins for your particular service (such as this plugin for Slideonline or plugin for Slideshare) .  But, the easiest thing to do is install JetPack, which you probably should have already done for other reasons.
  3. Then follow the directions.  Things vary slightly according to which service you use. Quoting from the Jetpack.me help pages:

Images and Documents

Here’s a link to a more detailed tutorial including screenshots from iTegrity Group about how to use Option 1 above for links or Option 2 here for SlideShare.

Option 3 – Embed Google Presentation from Google Drive  (my preferred)

This is my preferred option and the one I use the most. It’s conceptually similar to embedding a presentation viewer such as SlideShare, but the reasons I prefer it are:

  • Revisions: I can edit and create the presentation in Powerpoint (which I like), save it as PPTX, and then upload. Once it’s uploaded, I can make small edits to the presentation within the Google Doc’s Presentation editor.  I don’t need to revise the local copy, re-upload, re-edit links and embed codes, etc.  Small edit changes made to the copy stored on Google Drive are automatically made to the WordPress embedded version.
  • Backup and ownership: I regularly backup my Google Drive files locally so I feel safe even if Google were to disappear or end the service, my data doesn’t disappear.
  • Readers can download the file. Readers can download the file in their choice of .pptx (if it was originally in PPTX or PPT), or PDF, or they can download the speaker notes.  This enables me to add more info and explanation to each slide with disrupting the presentation.
  • Full-screen presentation from within WordPress.  No need for the browser-Powerpoint display dance while presenting. I can still go presentation full screen, but stay in the browser to switch to other tabs and then back easily to the presentation.
  • Incredibly easy embedding. As you’ll see, the process is pretty much cut-and-paste the Google embed code into the WordPress text editor view.
  • Customizable embed sizing.

How to:

  1. Plugins: Be sure your WordPress site has the ability to embed Google Docs.
    1. If you are hosted at WordPress.com, you’re ready.
    2. If you are self-hosted (using the WordPress.org version), then be sure you have either Jetpack plugin installed and/or Google Docs Embed plugin installed.
    3. If your blog is on a malartu.org site, you should already have the Jetpack and/or Google Docs Embed plugins installed.  If this doesn’t appear to be true or if you’re not certain, contact the webmaster@malartu.org.
  2. Create your presentation either in Powerpoint  or create it in Google Docs-Presents.
  3. Upload it to your Google Drive, If you upload your Powerpoint file, tell Google to convert it to Google Presents format.  You may want to open it in Google Docs to make sure formatting has converted properly.
  4. Share/Publish. In Google Drive/Docs, set your presentation to Share.  Then Publish to web. From the Publish to web dialog box, copy the embed code.
  5. Insert in WordPress post/page editor. While editing/creating the post/page where you want it to appear, paste the embed code on its own line seperate from any other text.  If you’re self-hosted, it’s often better to switch the editor to “text” view (upper right tab on editor box) and then paste. Then switch back to the “visual” WYSIWYG view.
  6. Edit the embed code for sizing: If the embed box is the wrong size (too tall, too wide, etc), you can edit the size of the box by editing the width and height parameters of the embed code directly.  These are measured in pixels.

If done right, your presentation should look like this:

 

For detailed, step-by-step tutorials with screen shots:

Option 4:  All in WordPress, including creation!

WordPress is in the process of becoming a replacement for Powerpoint altogether!  There are multiple ways to this. At this time, I’ve only begun the lightest experimentation with these approaches.  They are excellent if you want to keep readers on your site and don’t need readers to be able to download a file copy.  In all of these approaches, all creation, design, editing, effects, etc are created in WordPress in the post editor itself using either shortcodes or other capabilities added by plugins or JetPack.

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