Occasionally I write a tutorial-type blog post, and I think, this might be useful enough that someone would want to print it out for later reference. No, scratch that. ... I really should say I want to print it out for my own future reference, because my real reason for writing tutorials is to remind myself how to do things. So I don't have to figure it out all over from the beginning the next time I need to do it.
But did you ever try to print a post - any post - here on Active Rain? The format is not particularly printer-friendly. If the post is long, it will overflow into the comments. And the sidebar will print as multiple separate pages.
So here's a little system I came up with to convert individual blog posts to PDF E-Books. You might also want to combine several blog posts into one PDF E-Book.
You will need two free downloadable tools to do this.
NVU. This is a great little super-simple, easy-to- use HTML editor. Several AR members have sung its praises. You can download it here. Windows users choose Windows full installer
A PDF Creator. If you have the full version of Adobe Acrobat (not just Acrobat Reader), you already have a PDF creator. Otherwise, is free and does the job. There are several other free PDF creators available on the web. Just Google the words, and pick one.
Once you have those two tools, here's what to do:
Go to your blog post.
Click the Edit link
Click inside the entry editor box
Select all the text and images
I do this by Click CTRL A then click CTRL C
Start NVU
If the program is not already open at a new, blank, document, Click the New icon
Click CTRL V to paste the copied text and images into the new NVU document
If you want to change the font, click anywhere in the NVU document, then click CTRL A (to select all)
Choose the font you want, from the drop down list under "Variable width".
You might also want to add a title to the document, and your name and contact information as author. Or you may want to revise some of the text. Do that now.
By default NVU will show the file location or URL of the document, and the date and time it was created. If you don't want the location, or date and time to show on the final PDF, in NVU,
Click File -> Page Setup
Click the Margins & Header/Footer tab
Set Headers/Footers
(Choose "blank" instead of "URL" and instead of "Date/Time")
Click File -> Save
Now to create the PDF E-Book,
Click File -> Print.
Choose your PDF creator from the list of installed printers.
Click OK,
PDF Creator will ask you to name and save the document, and then it will go to work.
Point to remember: A PDF Creator is not a separate program that you run. It is a Printer Driver. You create a PDF by "printing" to PDF, even though it might seem more logical to the average person that you would "save" to PDF.
Viola.
You now have an easily printable, downloadable version of your blog post.
Upload it to your web server, and add it as a link to your post.
