wp-mins-to-read

A simple plugin to generate the minutes to read for WordPress posts. Increase blog readership by qualifying the time commitment needed to read your post.

Features

• Calculates the time it will take to read a post
• Adds Min Read column to WordPress post admin
• Provides a function for outputting Min Read on posts and archives
• Uses WordPress transients to store calculated values and increase performance.

Installation

1. Copy the wp-mins-to-read directory into your wp-content/plugins directory
2. Navigate to the Plugins dashboard page
3. Locate the menu item that reads WP Mins To Read
4. Click on Activate

Theme Integration

In order to output the time to read on the front end you will need to add the function call to your theme. You can do this by calling the get_mtr(); function. Typically you want to add the time to read above the post title. To do this you will need to edit two files.

Add to singal post & archive pages

• Open wp-content/themes/YOUR THEME/contents.php
• Find <h1 class="entry-title">
• Add the following line above or below the title line.

if( class_exists( 'WP_MinsToRead' ) ) {
	echo '<strong>' . WP_MinsToRead::get_mtr( get_the_ID() ) . '</strong>';
}

• Repeat steps to add the code to wp-content/themes/YOUR THEME/content-single.php

Credits

• Edward McIntyre plugin Author
• Tom McFarlin plugin structure is based on Tom's WordPress-Plugin-Boilerplate 2.0

Roadmap Items

• Find a good way to add the Min Read text to the posts automatically. There is no current filter that allows you to add text directly before or after the post title that is not included in the posts <h1> tag. This can by done using jQuery but on archive pages it could cause quite a performance lag.
• Add localization support
• Add Activation function to generate transients for current posts
• Add Deactivation function to delete transients from the database

Changlog

1.0.1

• Updated theme integration info to avoid breaking the theme when the plugin is disabled.
• get_mrt() now returns a string instead of echoing the result

1.0

• Initial Release