I used to collate contributions to a club newsletter that was also published on the web. I got stuff from Microsoft Word users containing smartquotes and my approach was to simply replace them all with ordinary quotes. A recursive edit will do that. In fact I used to drop all the authors' formatting and restyle it to suit the newsletter or website - which were quite different.

Including PDF in a web site is contentious. Jacon Neilson, the web usability guru, used to get quite exercised about it. But IMO it depends on the piece and the audience. It's probably unreadable on small devices, and for users who have poor sight and need to zoom the text (or are blind and use a screen reader). So not for an important page like the events list, but perhaps OK for a club history.