Reading Time — Reading Progress Bar for WordPress

Boost User Engagement and Keep Readers Hooked

Are your website visitors leaving before they finish your best articles? In today’s fast-paced digital world, holding a reader’s attention is harder than ever. Long-form content, while valuable for SEO, can often intimidate users, leading to high bounce rates and low time-on-page metrics.

The Reading Time — Reading Progress Bar for WordPress plugin is the perfect solution. It provides clear, visual feedback to your readers, showing them exactly how long an article will take to read and how far they’ve progressed. This simple psychological cue encourages them to keep scrolling, finish your content, and engage more deeply with your site.

By adding this elegant user experience (UX) enhancement, you can significantly reduce bounce rates, increase content consumption, and improve key SEO signals that Google loves. It’s a small change that delivers a massive impact on reader retention.

Key Features of Reading Time — Reading Progress Bar for WordPress

This plugin is packed with powerful features designed to be flexible, lightweight, and incredibly effective. Here’s a quick look at what makes it an essential tool for any content-focused website.

• Smart Reading Progress Bar: A sleek, customizable bar that visually tracks a reader’s scroll progress through an article.
• Accurate Estimated Reading Time: Automatically calculates and displays the estimated time to read an article, setting clear expectations for your visitors.
• Extensive Customization Options: Control everything from colors, height, and opacity to the position of the progress bar and reading time text.
• Lightweight and Performance-Focused: Built with clean, efficient code to ensure it doesn’t slow down your website. A fast site is crucial for SEO and user experience.
• Selective Display Control: Easily choose which post types to activate the plugin on. Show it on posts, pages, or even custom post types.
• Fully Mobile Responsive: The progress bar and reading time indicator look and work perfectly on all devices, from desktops to smartphones.
• Easy Placement with Shortcodes: Place the estimated reading time anywhere you want within your content using a simple shortcode.

In-Depth Feature Analysis

Let’s explore the three core features that make this plugin a must-have for boosting user engagement and improving your site’s readability.

The Smart Reading Progress Bar

The visual progress bar is the heart of this plugin. It acts as a subtle but powerful motivator, giving readers a sense of accomplishment as they scroll. This visual feedback loop taps into the human desire for completion, encouraging them to reach the end of your content.

You have complete control over its appearance to match your brand identity. You can:

• Position it on Top or Bottom: Choose whether the bar appears at the top or bottom of the viewport.
• Adjust Colors and Opacity: Use a color picker to select the exact foreground and background colors. You can even create cool gradient effects.
• Define its Height: Make the bar as thick or as thin as you like, ensuring it complements your site’s design without being intrusive.

Accurate Estimated Reading Time

Setting expectations is key to a good user experience. Before a user even starts reading, this plugin can tell them if they’re about to dive into a quick 2-minute read or a comprehensive 15-minute guide. This information helps them decide whether to read now or save it for later, reducing the chance they’ll simply leave.

The calculation is based on an average Words Per Minute (WPM) reading speed, which you can easily adjust in the settings to better match your audience. You can also customize the text labels, for example, changing “minute read” to “min read” or translating it into another language. This feature can be automatically placed before or after your content, or inserted anywhere using a shortcode for maximum flexibility.

Unmatched Customization and Placement Control

This isn’t a one-size-fits-all plugin. The Reading Time plugin gives you granular control over where and how its features appear. The intuitive settings panel allows you to tailor every aspect to your specific needs without touching a single line of code.

Key customization controls include:

• Post Type Selection: Don’t want a progress bar on your ‘Services’ page? No problem. Easily enable or disable the functionality for posts, pages, and any custom post types your site uses.
• Shortcode Flexibility: While you can automatically insert the reading time before content, the included shortcode [rt_reading_time] lets you place it in sidebars, footers, or even within page builder layouts.
• Full Text and Label Control: Customize the text that appears before and after the time calculation to perfectly match your site’s tone and language.

Who Needs This Powerful User Engagement Tool?

The Reading Time — Reading Progress Bar for WordPress is a versatile tool that benefits a wide range of website owners and developers.

For Bloggers & Content Creators

If you write long-form blog posts, detailed tutorials, or in-depth stories, this plugin is essential. It keeps your readers engaged, encourages them to finish your best work, and directly helps lower your bounce rate—a critical metric for demonstrating content quality to search engines.

For News & Magazine Sites

Online publications thrive on reader engagement. By providing a progress indicator on news articles and features, you improve the overall user experience, leading to longer visit durations. Increased time on page is a strong positive signal to search engines like Google.

For Agencies & Freelance Developers

Add immediate value to your client projects with this simple yet effective tool. Because you have the freedom to use it on unlimited websites, it’s a cost-effective addition to your standard toolkit. Deliver a better, more engaging final product that clients will love.

The Smart Choice: Get More Value and Freedom

Why pay for expensive, restrictive licenses when you can get the same powerful functionality with more freedom and at a fraction of the cost?

Unbeatable Value

Traditional premium plugins often come with recurring fees or per-site licenses that add up quickly. Our offering provides you with the complete, original plugin under the GPL. This means you pay a small, one-time price for a tool you can use on as many websites as you wish, forever.

Total Freedom and Flexibility

The General Public License (GPL) gives you the freedom to use this software how you see fit. There are no license keys to activate and no domain limitations. Use it on your personal blog, your business site, and every client project you build—the possibilities are limitless.

Clean, Safe, and Original Code

Your website’s security is paramount. We guarantee that you are downloading the original, untouched code from the developer. The plugin is 100% free from malware, viruses, or any malicious scripts. You get all the features and functionality, with the peace of mind that your site is safe.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I customize the color and position of the progress bar?

Absolutely! The plugin offers a user-friendly settings panel where you can use a color picker to set the foreground and background colors of the bar. You can also choose to position it at the top or the bottom of the screen and adjust its height.

Does the Reading Time plugin work with my theme and page builder (like Elementor or Divi)?

Yes, the plugin is designed to be universally compatible with all well-coded WordPress themes and page builders. The progress bar works at the browser level, so it’s independent of your theme’s layout. You can also use the provided shortcode to place the reading time text within Elementor, Divi, Beaver Builder, or the Gutenberg editor.

How do I receive updates for Reading Time — Reading Progress Bar for WordPress?

We provide access to all future updates for this plugin. When a new version is released by the original developer, we make it available for you to download from your account. You can then manually update the plugin on your WordPress site to get the latest features and security patches.

Will this plugin slow down my website?

No, the Reading Time plugin is extremely lightweight and optimized for performance. It’s built with clean code and has a minimal footprint, ensuring it won’t negatively impact your site’s loading speed or your Core Web Vitals scores.

Is the code for this plugin safe to use on my site?

Yes, 100%. We provide the exact same plugin that is distributed by the original developer. The files are scanned and verified to be free from any malware, ads, or backdoors. You are getting the authentic, safe-to-use premium plugin.

Can I choose to show the reading time and progress bar only on blog posts?

Yes, you have full control. In the plugin settings, you can select which post types the features should be active on. This allows you to enable it for ‘Posts’ while keeping it disabled for ‘Pages’ or other custom post types you might have.

What kind of support is included with this download?

Our offering focuses on providing you with access to the premium plugin at an incredible value. While we don’t provide direct technical support from the original developer, we ensure the plugin is up-to-date and fully functional. For usage questions, the plugin’s intuitive settings panel and our comprehensive product page cover most common needs.