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WPBeginner» Blog» Plugins» How to Display Estimated Post Reading Time in Your WordPress Posts

How to Display Estimated Post Reading Time in Your WordPress Posts

Last updated on October 4th, 2017 by Editorial Staff
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How to Display Estimated Post Reading Time in Your WordPress Posts

Do you want to display estimated post reading time in your WordPress blog posts? An estimated reading time encourages users to read a blog post instead of clicking away. In this article, we will show you how to easily add estimated post reading time in your WordPress posts.

Display post reading time in WordPress blog posts

Why Add Estimated Post Reading Time in WordPress Posts

When you are starting a new blog, your primary focus is on getting more visitors to your website.

However, you also need to increase the time each user spends on your website. This time shows user engagement, builds loyalty, and boosts your conversions.

This is why several popular websites show a progress bar on top that shows a reading progress bar as users scroll down a post.

Another way to achieve the same thing is by adding an estimated reading time in plain text. This encourages users by telling them that it will only take a few minutes of their time to read this article.

That being said, let’s take a look at how to easily add post reading time in WordPress.

Adding Estimated Post Reading Time in WordPress

First thing you need to do is install and activate the Reading Time WP plugin. For more details, see our step by step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, you need to visit Settings » Reading Time WP page to configure plugin settings.

Reading Time WP settings

Here you can select the text that will appear on screen for reading time and minutes. You can also adjust the reading speed. By default, plugin calculates reading time by estimating 300 words per minute reading speed.

If you don’t want to automatically show reading time next to each post, then you can uncheck ‘Insert Reading Time before content’ and ‘Insert Reading Time before excerpt’ options.

The plugin offers a shortcode that you can then manually insert into posts where you want to display reading time.

Don’t forget to click on the ‘Update Options’ button to store your settings.

You can now visit your website to see reading time next to your blog posts.

Reading time displayed in WordPress blog post

We hope this article helped you learn how to display estimated post reading time in your WordPress posts. You may also want to see our list of must have WordPress plugins for your website.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

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About the Editorial Staff

Editorial Staff at WPBeginner is a team of WordPress experts led by Syed Balkhi. Trusted by over 1.3 million readers worldwide.

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12 Comments

Leave a Reply
  1. jeje says:
    Dec 23, 2020 at 10:39 pm

    is there a way to show also the reading time when shared on facebook

    Reply
    • WPBeginner Support says:
      Dec 29, 2020 at 9:57 am

      We do not have a recommended method to guarantee that is included at the moment.

      Reply
  2. Leonardo Martins says:
    Jul 17, 2019 at 7:19 pm

    Is there any way to avoid showing reading time in homepage? I want to show it just when i click on each post

    Reply
    • WPBeginner Support says:
      Jul 18, 2019 at 10:10 am

      You would want to reach out to the plugin’s support for customizing the display like that

      Reply
  3. suvita says:
    Jun 24, 2019 at 9:13 am

    can we add estimate reading time without plugin?

    Reply
    • WPBeginner Support says:
      Jun 25, 2019 at 11:40 am

      You would still need to have something to give an estimation of the reading time which would be done by either a plugin built into the theme or similar.

      Reply
  4. Vlad says:
    Feb 18, 2018 at 12:15 pm

    Can some pages be ignored?

    Thanks!

    Reply
  5. Wagoner says:
    Feb 14, 2018 at 9:18 am

    It would be great if you could update this and with a similar plugin that works without the content editor, say for CPT custom fields, using ACF or Toolset.

    Thanks!

    Reply
  6. Nis says:
    Oct 30, 2017 at 11:38 pm

    Does this plugin supports Visual Composer. The problem I am having at the moment is it doesnt show up in widget.

    Reply
  7. Sander Feinberg says:
    Oct 4, 2017 at 11:53 am

    I like your blog and frequently find useful tips. However I am surprised you would republish a post with links to two plugins which have not been updated in 2 or 3 years. Since you likely have readers who are beginners, they might not even notice that.

    Reply
    • WPBeginner Support says:
      Oct 5, 2017 at 4:04 pm

      Hi Sander,

      We apologize for inconvenience. It seems like when you arrived at this URL, you were served a cached version of the article which was quite old as you mentioned. Hopefully, if you revisit now, then you’ll be able to see the new version.

      Reply
      • Sander Feinberg says:
        Oct 5, 2017 at 5:02 pm

        Thanks for the update!

        Reply

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