Give Readers an Instant Content-Length Estimate
- Visitors often want to know how much time a piece of content will require before they start reading.
- A small label such as “7 min read” gives them that information immediately.
- This is particularly useful for tutorials, long-form articles, news stories, documentation, educational content, and detailed blog posts. Readers can quickly decide whether to read the article now or return to it when they have more time.
- WP PowerSuite calculates the estimate automatically, so authors do not need to enter a reading time every time they publish or update an article.
Automatically Calculate Reading Time From Word Count
- Reading Time Calculator uses a straightforward calculation based on the amount of readable content and the configured words-per-minute rate.
- For example, with the default speed of 200 words per minute, an article containing approximately 1,000 words would have an estimated reading time of around five minutes.
- The result is rounded up, and content containing words receives a minimum estimate of one minute.
- Because the reading time is calculated dynamically rather than saved as a fixed post-meta value, editing an article automatically affects its next calculated reading time.
- There is nothing extra for authors to maintain.
Choose Your Own Reading Speed
- Not every website needs to use the same reading-speed assumption.
- WP PowerSuite lets you configure a reading speed between 60 and 600 words per minute, with 200 WPM used by default.
- A general blog may keep the standard setting, while websites publishing highly technical or detailed material may choose a slower reading speed.
- You can also override the configured speed for an individual shortcode when a particular piece of content requires a different calculation.
- This gives you a consistent site-wide default without locking every piece of content to the same estimate.
Display Reading Time Automatically
- Reading time can be inserted automatically into eligible content without editing your theme.
- Available positions include: Before the content, after the content, before the first paragraph, or after the first paragraph.
- The default position is before the content, which works well for displaying reading time near an article title, author information, or introduction.
- Automatic insertion runs only on appropriate singular content and avoids inserting the label multiple times during the same request.
- If you have already placed the Reading Time shortcode inside the post, WP PowerSuite can also skip automatic insertion to prevent duplicate labels.
Place Reading Time Manually With a Shortcode
- For complete control over placement, use:
<[wpps_reading_time]> - The shortcode can display the reading time for the current published post or another eligible post by ID.
- It also supports different output formats.
- For example, you can use the normal configured label, a shorter format such as “5 mins”, . or return only the calculated number.
- You can also specify a custom WPM value for an individual shortcode instance.
- This makes the module suitable for custom templates and page-builder layouts where automatic content insertion may not be the ideal placement method.
