About this plugin
Turn any PDF into a realistic 3D flipbook on your WordPress site. PDF Rack is a PDF flipbook maker, PDF viewer and PDF embedder in one plugin: upload a catalogue, magazine, brochure, menu, e-book or report and your visitors flip through it like a real book — with page curl, page-turn shadows and click-to-flip — right on your page.
Prefer a classic layout? Every PDF can also be shown in a vertical scroll reader or a page-by-page slider, inline or in a full-screen popup. js and WebGL, on desktop, tablet and phone.
Unlike the WordPress Media Library that buries PDFs among thousands of images, PDF Rack gives you a dedicated PDF library to upload, categorise and find documents, then embed them with a Gutenberg block, an Elementor widget or a shortcode in seconds.
📖 Popular uses for the PDF flipbook
- Digital catalogues & product brochures — let shoppers flip through your catalogue and add products to the cart from the page (Pro).
- Online magazines, newsletters & e-books — a page-flip reading experience that keeps readers on your site.
- Restaurant menus, price lists & flyers — a mobile-friendly PDF viewer instead of a download.
- Annual reports, white papers & course handouts — searchable, shareable, with reading analytics (Pro).
🚀 Why site owners choose PDF Rack
- Save time — Upload, categorize, and find any PDF in seconds with built-in search and filters.
- Better user experience — Visitors read PDFs right on your page without leaving your site or installing anything.
- Works everywhere — Gutenberg block, Elementor widget, or a simple shortcode. Pick whatever fits your workflow.
- Mobile-ready — The viewer automatically adapts to any screen size so your content looks great on phones and tablets.
📋 Feature Highlights
- Dedicated PDF Dashboard — A focused admin panel just for your PDF documents, separate from the Media Library clutter.
- Categories & Tags — Organize documents with custom taxonomies for easy sorting and retrieval.
- Quick Search & Filter — Find any document instantly by name, category, or upload date.
- Media Library Preview — Preview PDF contents directly within the WordPress Media Library details view.
- Auto-Generate Covers — Generate and set a cover image for your PDFs on demand.
- 3D PDF Flipbook — A realistic WebGL page-flip book with page curl, shadows, spread detection, click or drag to turn pages, and zoom.
- PDF Reader & Slider — A vertical-scroll PDF reader and a page-by-page slider. Every viewer has thumbnails, outline, full-text search, zoom, fullscreen, download and print — powered by Mozilla’s PDF.js.
- Toolbar Modes — Keep the toolbar visible, auto-hide it while reading, or minimize it to a small page counter.
- Lightbox Viewer & Link Interceptor — Open PDFs in a responsive full-screen modal overlay from any button, link, image, or automatically intercept standard PDF links on your site.
- Gutenberg PDF Viewer Block — Embed a PDF viewer or flipbook in the block editor.
- Elementor Widgets — PDF Viewer and PDF Shelf widgets with a live preview in the Elementor editor.
- Shortcode Support — Use [pdf-rack id="123"] in the Classic Editor or any text widget.
- PDF Shelf — Show a category, a tag or hand-picked PDFs as a responsive cover gallery with [pdf-rack-shelf] or the PDF Rack Shelf block; each cover opens in the popup viewer.
- Share & Resume — A Share button and #page links open any PDF at a given page; returning readers can continue where they left off.
- Lightweight & Fast — No bloat. The viewer loads only on pages where you embed a PDF.
💎 PDF Rack Pro
- Hardcover Flipbook — Rigid first & last pages that open like a real hardcover book.
- Coverflow Slider — A 3D coverflow effect for the slider viewer.
- Right-to-Left Reading — Turn pages right to left for Arabic, Hebrew, manga and more.
- Custom Viewer Background — Match the viewer stage to your brand.
- Brand Themes — Your accent colour, a dark, light or glass toolbar, round, soft or square corners, your theme’s font and your logo on every viewer.
- Download & Print Controls — Hide the download and print buttons per embed.
- Password Protection — Lock individual PDFs behind a password; the file address is never shown on the page.
- Watermarks — Stamp your site name, the viewer’s name or email, or the date across every page, including downloaded and printed copies.
- Reading Analytics — Views, unique visitors, reading time, read-through rate, downloads and prints, without storing IP addresses. Page attention shows the time spent on each page and where readers stop; export sessions as CSV and get a weekly email report.
- Shelf Styles — Wooden bookshelf, carousel and list-with-descriptions layouts for the PDF shelf, plus a search box and category filter.
- WooCommerce Documents — Attach manuals, datasheets and catalogues to products; they appear in a “Documents” tab and open in the viewer, optionally only for customers who bought the product.
- Interactive Hotspots — Draw clickable areas on any page: open a link, jump to a page, show a note, play a YouTube, Vimeo or MP4 video, or add a WooCommerce product to the cart. Works in every viewer and counts clicks.
- Sound — A soft page-turn sound for the flipbook and slider, and background music or narration per PDF with a play/pause button.
- Expiring & Limited Links — Share a private link to one PDF that stops working after a date or a number of viewers, with download on or off; turn it off at any time.
- Lead Capture — Ask for an email before a PDF opens or after a free preview of a few pages, then search, filter and export your leads as CSV.
⚙️ How It Works
- Go to PDF Rack → Add New and upload your PDF.
- Assign a category (optional) to keep things organized.
- Embed it anywhere using the Gutenberg block, Elementor widget, or the auto-generated shortcode, and pick the flipbook, slider or reader.
That’s it — your visitors can now read the PDF directly on your site.
Third Party Libraries
This plugin utilizes the following third-party libraries to provide its functionality:
- PDF.js (Mozilla) – https://github.com/mozilla/pdf.js (Apache License 2.0)
- three.js – https://threejs.org (MIT) — 3D flipbook rendering
- React (Meta) – https://reactjs.org (MIT)
- Lucide Icons – https://lucide.dev (ISC)
- Date-fns – https://date-fns.org (MIT)
- pdf-lib – https://pdf-lib.js.org (MIT) — watermarked downloads