Creating PDF files from your WordPress posts and pages provides an effective way to repurpose your content. You can engage your subscribers by offering them giveaways, e.g how-to guides, case studies, and checklists. They are able to access and download these files easily.
While WordPress doesn’t support exporting posts and pages to the portable document format by default, there are various plugins available in the WordPress repository to help you resolve this problem. It’s not easy to narrow them down and pick the right one for your website.
In this article, we’re going to walk you through the top 5 plugins to automatically create PDF files from WordPress posts and pages. Their main features along with pros and cons will be brought to the table.
- Watermark WordPress Files
- Kalin’s PDF Creation Station
- WP-MPDF
- WordPress Posts to PDF from weLaunch
- WP Advanced PDF
#1 Watermark WordPress Files
Watermark WordPress Files allows you to export WordPress posts to PDFs with just a single click. So all you need to do include installing and activating the plugin, opening an existing page or post, then hitting the “Export this post to PDF” button right in the edit screen.
On the Settings page, you can enable the feature “Show page number on footer” which proves useful when your content is very long. The plugin permits you to customize PDF headers and footers as well. You can display your company names or a copyright notice there.
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Any image file formats in the content such as JPEG, PNG, and GIF in the PDF will be shown in the exported PDF file. Also useful is that links of other MP3, MP4, and PDF files embedded in your blog posts are displayed and work well on the PDF file.
In case you’re using multiple fonts in your content, the exported PDF will use our plugin’s default one which makes all your PDF content look more consistent.
It’s possible to combine many pages and posts to export at a time. For example, you can group relevant blog posts and create a guideline with many sections and chapters.
Plus, your generated PDF file will look well-organized thanks to the Table of Contents feature. The post’s headings, subheadings, and page numbers will be listed on the first page of the PDF file.
Other Features
Apart from converting WordPress pages and posts into PDF files, Watermark WordPress Files offers two other important features, namely Watermarking WordPress files and Embedding PDFs into WordPress content. It grants you permission to add some text to your photos to protect them or can embed and view PDF files in WordPress posts.
Still, Watermark WordPress Files plugin only displays media files of pages and posts in the converted PDF files if they currently exist in Media libraries. When the images in the content are deleted from the library, the exported PDF will leave a blank space.
Remember to hit the Update button before converting the post into a PDF file if you modify content. Otherwise, the file will show the old version rather than the latest one.
Pros and Cons
Pros
- Show any image file types on the exported PDF
- Add page numbers and customize page header and footer
- Allow all links inserted in the content to work well on the converted PDF file
- Make PDF content consistent by using the default font
- Offer additional features such as watermarking PDF files, embed PDF files into pages and posts, and prevent image text by disabling right-click
- Provide a friendly UI with simple settings making it easy for users to export files
- Create a TOC for your PDF file
Cons
- Won’t show the latest content in the PDF file unless you click on the Update button after adjusting the content
- Leave a blank space in the PDF if you removed the media file from the library
Take a quick look at how to use the Watermark WordPress Files plugin to convert WordPress posts to a PDF file here:
#2 Kalin’s PDF Creation Station
Kalin’s PDF Creation Station lets you generate a PDF from many posts and pages with ease. You can choose your desired posts and pages then convert them into a single PDF file within seconds.
The plugin comes in handy when you plan to create a customized cover page and the last page of a PDF. It’s possible for you to configure custom headers and footers of the files as well. Your PDF will look more attractive, as a result.
Kalin’s PDF Creation Station is a great choice for those who are looking for a way to reduce server load while generating PDFs from posts. It saves converted PDF files on your server so you only need to create them once. No matter how many times you edit the page and click the Convert button, it updates on the same PDF file. The old PDF versions will always be automatically replaced.
However, photos are not correctly aligned after exporting even though they look good on WordPress pages.
The plugin involves a quite complicated using process with many steps needed. Some sections even require coding which represents significant challenges for people who have very little knowledge of programming skills.
You should note that Kalin’s PDF Creation Station hasn’t been updated in the last 6 years. This means there might be some security vulnerability holes in the plugin. You should consider it carefully before installing it on your WordPress site.
Pros and Cons
Pros
- Create PDF files from many pages and posts at a time
- Reduce server load by creating only one PDF file and update that file when you adjust the page content
- Add customized first page, last page, and page title
Cons
- Not support aligning images
- Have a complicated using process
- Require coding
- Provide an unfriendly UI
- Hasn’t been tested with the last 3 major releases of WordPress
#3 WP-MPDF
WP-MPDF is another option for generating PDF files from WordPress posts and pages. Enabling password protection for posts is one of its outstanding features. In other words, only people who have the correct password to your WordPress site or pages are authorized to export and print it.
What’s more, you have the right to redistribute or modify the plugin. It’s optional with Geshi highlighting as well.
Still, users find it difficult and complicated to install and start using the plugin. After uploading the whole plugin folder, you need to set the permission to the plugin dir folder and provide a shortcode to add the pdf button to the post.
Pros and Cons
Pros
- Password protect posts
- Allow to redistribute or modify the plugin
Cons
- Not easy to set up and get started
#4 WordPress Posts to PDF from weLaunch
WordPress Posts to PDF from weLaunch is such a great plugin to convert WordPress posts into PDFs. You can decide the background, the text color, as well as the color of links on your exported file.
Unlike Watermark WordPress Files which use the default font, all the format of headings, images, blocks, etc. of the converted files will be kept exactly the same as how it looks in the WordPress post.
This plugin allows you to insert links to post categories. It helps readers go back to the list of similar articles or to the Blog section on the website easily.
Besides exporting posts to PDF files, this plugin offers another feature of exporting content to Microsoft Word documents. When you print the document, the format is totally the same as the view version.
However, you have permission to generate only one PDF from a single WordPress page or post at a time. It’s not updated frequently. Its latest update was about a few months ago.
Pros and Cons
Pros
- Keep the formats of headings, images, blocks the same as the article
- Allow you to choose different layouts
- Provide Word document exporting feature
Cons
- Export only a single page or post at a time
- Not update frequently
#5 WP Advanced PDF
Last but not least, WP Advanced PDF lets your readers convert your blog posts into PDF files themselves. It allows you to give a pdf extract link into your post so that they can export it with one click only.
Using custom fonts, logos, and even adding a watermark to your PDF files are available as well. Adding your company logo to make the PDFs look professional has never been done easier.
The Setting page is very long and requires many steps, including general settings like post types allowed and cache update, image scaling ratio, or units of measurement.
Pros and Cons
Pros
- Give visitors the ability to export the print the PDF file on their own
- Use custom fonts, logo on the exported PDF file
- Add watermark to your converted PDF
- Provide an extract link for your post
Cons
- Require a lot of settings to start using
- Has not been updated for 2 years
Which is Your Preferable WordPress Export Plugin?
Generating PDF files from WordPress posts and pages plays a key role in engaging your audiences with newly published blogs. Instead of taking the time to create new PDF files, you can export valuable posts to PDF ebooks and send them to subscribers in your newsletter marketing campaign.
Even though WordPress doesn’t assist users in converting posts into PDF files by default, you are able to do it quickly by installing a plugin.
We’ve distilled everything we learned about generating PDFs from WordPress posts and pages into these five best WordPress PDF exporting solutions. While they share a common feature, each plugin offers some specifications that are worth checking out.
Do you have any other solution you want to add? Or you need more information about how to export WordPress posts to pdf with one of these plugins? Leave your ideas in the comment section below to let us know.
