PDF Poster – let visitors read PDFs without leaving the page

Description

The Ultimate PDF Embedder Plugin for WordPress, Loved by Over 20,000+ Users

PDF Poster | Documentation | Pricing | Support | Demo

PDF Poster is a flexible plugin that allows you to embed PDF documents directly into WordPress posts, pages, widgets, or templates. Whether you’re sharing brochures, eBooks, business files, or portfolios, the plugin provides a responsive and accessible layout that works across all devices.

Embed with the Gutenberg block, the [pdf_embed] shortcode, or the classic editor — whichever fits how you already work. The free version ships three PDF viewers (the bundled PDF.js viewer, an interactive FlipBook and a Slider), independent height and width for desktop, tablet and mobile, print, download and full-screen buttons, social sharing, light/dark theming, RTL support, a popup (lightbox) viewer, text watermarking, custom CSS and progressive loading for large files. It also counts how many times each PDF is viewed and downloaded each day, in your own database, with no third-party service and no IP address stored. Analytics history and trends, content protection, logo watermarking, Reader Mode, the Adobe and Continuous Scroll viewers and cloud imports are Pro.

PDF Poster Free Features — Everything Below Is Included, Free

No trials, no locked toggles, no watermark on your pages. Everything in this section works in the plugin you install from WordPress.org.

Free PDF Viewers — Three Ways to Read a Document

• Default PDF viewer (PDF.js) — The bundled Mozilla PDF.js engine: page navigation, zoom, text search and text selection, on desktop and mobile.
• FlipBook PDF viewer — A realistic page-turn book for brochures and magazines, with a page-flip sound you can switch off.
• Slider PDF viewer — One page at a time, swiped or clicked through. Made for menus, price lists and catalogues.
• FlipBook from images — Build the page-turn book from an ordered image gallery instead of a PDF, for scans and design-tool exports.

Embed PDF Files Anywhere in WordPress

• Two Gutenberg PDF blocks — PDF Poster to embed a file directly, and PDF Poster Selector to drop in a document you already saved.
• PDF shortcode — [pdf_embed url="…"] drops a PDF into any post, page, widget or template, with attributes for size, title, print, download and the full-screen label. For full control, save a PDF Poster document and paste its [pdf id="123"] shortcode — it carries every setting you configured.
• Classic editor metabox — A full settings panel on every PDF Poster document, so you never have to open a block to configure a viewer.
• Unlimited PDF embeds — No cap on how many PDFs you embed, or how many pages they have.

Responsive PDF Viewer on Every Screen

• Separate height and width for desktop, tablet and mobile — Set each breakpoint independently instead of forcing one size on every device.
• Device preview switcher — Flip between desktop, tablet and mobile while you configure, in both the block and the metabox.

Reading Experience and Navigation

• Viewer theme: light, dark or auto — Themes the viewer toolbar and background. The PDF page content itself is never altered.
• RTL layout: off, on or auto — Flips the viewer and toolbar for Arabic, Hebrew and other right-to-left languages, in every viewer.
• Keyboard navigation — Left and right arrow keys turn pages in all viewers.
• Annotation mode — Shows the notes, highlights, comments and clickable links already saved inside the PDF.
• Open PDF links in a new tab — Links clicked inside the document open in a new tab, so your page stays put.
• Filename display — Show the document name above the viewer.

Print, Download, Full Screen and Social Sharing

• Print — Let visitors print straight from the viewer, or turn printing off entirely.
• Download button — One-click download above the viewer, or no download at all.
• Full-screen button — Show or hide the full-screen toggle on any embed.
• Social sharing — Facebook, X (Twitter), LinkedIn, Pinterest and email buttons, placed above or below the viewer, each one individually switchable.

PDF Watermarking — Text Marks Are Free

• Text watermark on every page — Stamp your own wording across the document.
• Three ready-made themes — Confidential, Draft Stamp and Sample Wash, each with its own angle, tiling and weight, so a usable mark is one click away.
• Dynamic placeholders — Drop {site_name}, {post_title}, {file_name}, {page}, {pages}, {date}, {year}, {user_name}, {user_email} or {user_ip} into the text and it resolves per page and per visitor.
• Choose which pages — All pages, the first page only, or everything except the cover.
• Live preview while you edit — The editor draws the mark with the same builder the front end uses, so what you see is what publishes.

Popup (Lightbox) PDF Viewer — Free

• Open PDFs in a modal — Keep the page clean and load the document only when a reader asks for it.
• Button or image trigger — Trigger from a styled button or from any image, with your own alignment, image dimensions and an optional PDF icon overlay.

PDF Analytics — See Today’s Views and Downloads, Free

• Today’s views and downloads — How many times each document was opened and downloaded today, with no third-party analytics service. The figures appear on the PDF Posters list, beside each document in both editors, and on the Analytics screen.
• Accurate behind a page cache — Counting happens in the visitor’s browser, so figures stay right on sites running WP Rocket, LiteSpeed or Cloudflare instead of recording one view per cached copy.
• Every embed counted — Not only saved PDF Posters: a block placed straight onto a page and [pdf_embed url="…"] each get their own figures.
• Privacy-first by default — No IP address stored, no cookie set, nothing sent to a third party. The rows live in your own database.
• Site-wide controls — Turn counting on or off, keep your own visits out of the numbers, and optionally respect the browser’s Do Not Track header.

A view is recorded once the viewer has genuinely been on screen — not on every page load — and once per visitor per 30 minutes.

Styling and Custom CSS

• Button and title styling — Background colour, text colour, font size and padding for the action buttons, plus the title font size, with no CSS needed.
• Site-wide custom CSS — One stylesheet for every embed, in Settings.
• Per-document CSS and CSS class — Style a single poster or a single block without touching your theme.

Site-Wide Defaults

• Presets in Settings — Set the defaults every new PDF Poster starts from, so you configure once instead of on every document. (Changing a preset affects documents you create afterwards.)

Performance and Reliability

• Fast loading (progressive rendering) — Streams large PDFs so the first page appears while the rest is still downloading.
• Google Doc Viewer fallback — An optional second rendering path for browsers that mishandle inline PDFs (recommended for Edge).

In Your WordPress Dashboard

• PDF Poster dashboard — One place for your documents, demos, help and changelog.
• PDF chatbot assistant — Ask setup questions without leaving WordPress.

PDF Poster Pro Features — What Upgrading Adds

Everything above stays exactly as it is. PDF Poster Pro adds the following on top.

Two More PDF Viewers

• Adobe PDF viewer — Rendering by the Adobe PDF Embed API, with Adobe’s own embed and view modes, including its lightbox.
• Continuous Scroll viewer — Every page in one uninterrupted scroll, built for long reports.

Advanced Reading Controls

• Reader Mode — The document and nothing else: no toolbar, no frame, no distractions.
• Thumbnail sidebar — Show the page thumbnails panel, and choose whether it opens by default.
• Initial page and default zoom — Open on page 12 at 125% if that is where the reader should start.
• Horizontal scrollbar — Make horizontal scrolling the default for wide documents.
• Hide the right toolbar — Trim the viewer chrome further.

Button Labels and Placement

• Rename the download button — Your label, your language.
• Rename the full-screen button — Same, for the full-screen toggle.
• Open full screen in a new tab — Send the full-screen view to its own tab.
• Move the action bar — Put print, download and full screen above or below the viewer.

Logo Watermarking and Anti-Leak

• Logo, or logo with text — Stamp your logo over every page, on its own or beside your wording.
• Three more themes — Brand Corner, Logo Wash and Logo + Caption, each with its own angle, tiling and weight.
• Custom theme — Set coverage, position, strength, size and angle yourself: from a single corner mark to a dense tile that cannot be cropped out of a screenshot.
• Choose who sees it — Everyone, everyone except administrators (so you can proof the clean original), or logged-out visitors only.
• Anti-leak options — A per-visitor stamp that identifies whoever opened a leaked screenshot, plus tamper restore that puts the mark back if a visitor deletes it with browser dev tools.

Watermarking is a deterrent, not DRM — an on-screen mark can be removed with browser dev tools, and no browser can prevent a screenshot.

PDF Content Protection

• Disable right-click and copying — Block the context menu and copy shortcuts on your documents.
• Disable text selection — Stop text being dragged out of the viewer.
• Suppress blocked-action alerts — Enforce protection quietly, without warning pop-ups.

Full PDF Analytics History

Every day is recorded on every version, in your own database. The free plugin shows you today; Pro reads the rest back — so there is nothing to import when you upgrade, and the history your site has already built is there waiting.

• All-time totals and history — Total views and downloads for any document, over any period.
• 7, 30 and 90 day reports — Views and downloads over time as a chart, with the change against the previous period.
• Download rate, busiest day and top documents — What people actually read, ranked.
• Per-document reports — Open any single document’s own trend and totals straight from the editor, as a link you can bookmark or share.
• Sortable Views and Downloads columns — On the PDF Posters list, so your most-read documents sort to the top.
• CSV export — Take any range into a spreadsheet.

Import, Reuse and Support

• Google Drive picker and Dropbox import — Pull a PDF straight from cloud storage instead of uploading it twice.
• Preset library for blocks — Save a block’s whole configuration and reuse it across your site.
• Always load the latest version — Replace the file and every embed updates, with no re-linking.
• Priority one-on-one support — Straight to the developers.

Coming soon in Pro: in-viewer Ads, already sketched in the interface and shipping in a later release.

Try PDF Poster Pro — unlock every premium feature today.

How to Use PDF Poster – Step-by-Step Guide

Getting started with PDF Poster is quick and easy!

Step-by-Step Instructions

• After installing, go to the “PDF Poster” menu in your WordPress dashboard

• Upload one or more PDF documents

• Copy the Shortcode shown in the editor or PDF list

• Paste the shortcode into any post, page, or widget area

• Hit the Publish button.

Enjoy your beautifully embedded PDF!

Gutenberg Block Integration

Using the block editor? Here’s how to embed PDFs in just a few clicks:
Open a post or page in the WordPress editor

• Click the + icon or use the slash command (/pdf)

• Find PDF Poster under the Layout Elements category

• Click the icon to insert the block

• Choose your PDF from the media library

• Hit Publish and enjoy!

Live Demo | Get PDF Poster PRO

Shortcode Usage

Shortcode

[pdf_embed url=”https://example.com/document.pdf” width=”100%” height=”842px” print=”true” title=”My PDF Document” download_btn=”true” fullscreen_btn_text=”View in Fullscreen”]

Attributes

• url (required): The URL of the PDF file.

  • Default: null
  • Example: url="https://example.com/document.pdf"

• width (optional): Width of the PDF viewer.

  • Default: "100%"
  • Example: width="80%"

• height (optional): Height of the PDF viewer.

  • Default: "842px"
  • Example: height="600px"

• print (optional): Display a print button.

  • Accepted values: "true", "false"
  • Default: "false"
  • Example: print="true"

• title (optional): Title displayed above the PDF viewer.

  • Default: null
  • Example: title="Document Title"

• download_btn (optional): Display a download button.

  • Accepted values: "true", "false"
  • Default: "false"
  • Example: download_btn="true"

• fullscreen_btn_text (optional): Text for the fullscreen button.

  • Default: "View Fullscreen"
  • Example: fullscreen_btn_text="Open Fullscreen"

User Feedback

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Weronika Zielinska – Empp

❛❛A great plugin that makes it easy to add the necessary posters and pdfs! It makes it very easy to quickly create a website. I definitely recommend it and we will definitely use it always.❜❜

–empp

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ good plugin

❛❛This pdf poster plugin does really solve my requirement.❜❜

–a2zdoctors

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