If your Shorthand plan offers .Zip downloads of your stories, you have considerable flexibility in how you publish, host or distribute them.
As a publishing option, the .Zip file enables you to download a compiled version of a story, consisting of only client-side technologies (HTML, CSS, JS and media) and ready to use. The .Zip file includes everything your story requires to render. Because you have all the elements, you can easily run the content through any post processing you require (e.g., you might inject custom tracking code, site navigation, or change URLs).
Downloading the .Zip
Before downloading the .Zip, you will typically need to set the URL where the page will be hosted from. Without this URL, we cannot accurately set important page meta data, so information may not be displayed correctly when your page appears in search engines and social media, and navigation will not display or function correctly if you're publishing a Shorthand Project.
If you're publishing an individual Story, you'll set the URL from the PUBLISHED URL field under the Story Settings panel:
Once the Published URL has been set, go to the Publishing panel and select the Download Story button.
If you're publishing a Shorthand Project, you'll set the URL from the Publishing panel instead of the story settings:
Once you've selected Download Story, the browser will begin a download of a .Zip folder that contains the static webpage code and media files that you can upload and host on your servers.
Once you have the static files, don't forget to:
Add your analytics code (unless you already did this in Shorthand or from your custom Shorthand theme)
Check the social sharing (e.g. social sharing icons, social meta tags) is correct. These can only be properly tested once on the final URL.
Check the story after uploading the files to your server and configuring the CDN (if used) to ensure all content loads correctly.
If needed, you can embed a downloaded story via an existing website - check out our Story Embed and Story Launcher features.
If you have any questions or concerns regarding how your Shorthand story should be launched or delivered, please don't hesitate to contact us.