Finding a WordPress PDF Viewer
As a business owner with a WordPress site, you’re excited about the new products and services you want to provide your customers with digital-friendly documents that you spent a lot of money designing. After organizing them, you need to get them on your site. Unfortunately, a Flash plugin is no longer an option.
PDF Woes
After an hour of trying, you wonder why WordPress doesn’t have a built-in PDF viewer that allows visitors to view and download print-friendly PDFs directly from your site. Fortunately, several WordPress PDF viewer plugins are available to solve this problem.
But first, let’s understand what a WordPress PDF viewer plugin is and when you would use it. In your case, having a viewable and printable PDF on the website is essential. Printing handouts is wasteful, and it takes forever to email them. A PDF plugin lets you embed a full WordPress PDF viewer into a page, allowing visitors to flip through the pages, zoom in, take notes, and print the document when needed.
PDF Options
Let’s explore some of the best WordPress PDF viewer plugins available in 2023. Here are the top 10 plugins worth considering to embed any document:
- PDF.js Viewer Shortcode: Despite its less-than-ideal name, this plugin offers a beautiful user interface and features like document outline navigation and customizable buttons. It’s also free to use, making it an excellent option for displaying a PDF on your WordPress site. FOr those searching a PDF viewer WordPress plugin, it is definitely a match.
- Flowpaper: Flowpaper provides an advanced-looking PDF viewer for WordPress at no cost. While it may not be user-friendly for beginners, it offers multiple PDF upload options and has a cloud hosting option. However, be aware that it may not support all browsers and devices out of the box.
- PDF and Print by BestWebSoft: This plugin goes beyond being a PDF file viewer and allows you to convert blog posts directly into PDFs. It supports download options, and custom headers, and integrates with WooCommerce PDF Invoice. The free version has most of the necessary features, but the premium version offers additional capabilities for a yearly fee.
- Real3D FlipBook WordPress Plugin: If you’re looking for a visually stunning PDF viewer, Real3D FlipBook is an excellent choice. It simulates flipping through pages like a magazine and offers extensive customization options. However, it may be overkill for basic PDFs and comes with a higher price tag as a premium plugin than other plugins.
- Embed PDF Viewer: For a simple and lightweight PDF viewer, consider Embed PDF Viewer. It allows you to embed PDFs from the media library or external sources with a PDF embedder, offering a straightforward solution without unnecessary frills. It works well with any WordPress page, WordPress post, multisite and mobile devices but may not have all the required features.
The problem you come across is this: you have 30 different PDFs. Yet, the information in them is semi-connected as they talk about other product and service options you have. No existing WordPress PDF plugin can do more than upload and embed one PDF at a time. There must be a way to sort or search the PDFs or even post groups on different pages.
PDF Embed Solution
Well, that is until you read this- Resource Center is the solution for your business. If you had one or two PDFs, the above options are a great fit. However, if you have a handful or more PDFs, you will want to:
- Name the PDFs
- Categorize the PDF document by type and subject
- Index their word content to be search
- Group them into pages via a widget
- Download PDF options, like gated content
- Keep the loading speed of your site manageable
Resource Center does all of this and more. We are a paid PDF format service but if PDFs are a critical part of your sales or even client communication like a PDF invoice record, a free plugin will not help. Unlike the other listed options, Resource Center is a javascript-based embed function, meaning it works on any WordPress website and does not require software updates or working around a WordPress theme. It will also work on non-WordPress sites like Wix, Webflow, and many others that allow javascript.