PDF Engine – Transform PDFs into Interactive Reading Experiences

PDF Engine is a lightweight, high-performance WordPress plugin designed specifically for news publishers to display digital e-papers. It transforms standard PDF files into an interactive, mobile-responsive reading experience with advanced clipping and sharing capabilities.

🚀 Key Features

• Premium Interactive Viewer: A sleek, modern UI with "Glassmorphism" aesthetics, floating toolbar, and dark mode optimizations.
• Smart Clipping & Sharing: Readers can select any part of the newspaper page to create a "Clip". This generates a unique, shareable link that highlights just that specific article or section.
• SEO Optimized: Automatically adds noindex tags to clip URLs to prevent duplicate content issues while maintaining link equity for the main post.
• Mobile Responsive: Fully optimized for touch devices with intuitive pinch-to-zoom and swipe navigation.
• Social Integration: Built-in sharing to WhatsApp, X (Twitter), and Instagram, plus a one-click "Copy Link" feature.
• Zero Configuration: Uses native WordPress Posts. simply paste the PDF URL in the meta box, and it renders automatically.
• High Performance: Powered by Mozilla's PDF.js for fast, accurate vector rendering without external dependencies.

📦 Installation

1. Download the pdf-engine folder.
2. Upload the folder to your wp-content/plugins/ directory.
3. Activate the plugin through the 'Plugins' menu in WordPress.

🛠️ Usage

Adding an pdf

1. Create a new Post (or edit an existing one).
2. Scroll down to the "pdf PDF URL" meta box (usually below the main editor).
3. Paste the direct URL to your PDF file (e.g., https://example.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/daily-news.pdf).
4. Publish or Update the post.
5. The interactive viewer will automatically appear at the bottom of your post content.

Valid Clip & Share

1. Open the pdf on the frontend.
2. Click the Scissors / Share Icon in the toolbar.
3. Click and drag on the page to draw a selection box around an article.
4. A popup will appear with sharing options used to share that specific clip.

⚙️ Settings

Go to Settings > PDF Engine Settings in your WordPress dashboard.

• Theme Color: Choose a primary accent color for the viewer (buttons, highlights, and icons) to match your brand identity.

🤖 Automation (n8n Integration)

The plugin is fully compatible with n8n via the WordPress REST API. To update a PDF URL automatically:

• Endpoint: POST /wp-json/wp/v2/posts/{POST_ID}
• Body (JSON):

  {
    "meta": {
      "_pdf_engine_url": "https://your-domain.com/path-to-file.pdf"
    }
  }
  

• Authentication: Use Application Passwords (standard WordPress feature).

🔧 Technical Details

• Permissions: The "pdf PDF URL" box is restricted to users with edit_post capabilities.
• Security: All inputs are sanitized, and outputs escaped. Nonces are used for all form submissions.
• Permalink Handling: The plugin intelligently intercepts ?clip= parameters to prevent unwanted canonical redirects, ensuring clip links always work.

💡 Credits

• Developed by: paw1xd
• PDF Engine: PDF.js by Mozilla

Author: Pawan
Contributors: paw1xd
License: GPLv2
Current Version: 1.0