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Texon Flipbook

WordPress plugin that turns any PDF into an interactive page-turn flipbook with clickable hotspots — self-hosted FlipSnack/Issuu alternative

by Texon Towel · github.com/rynoceris/texon-flipbook

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Install

No release zip yet. The repository archive installs, but the folder name will carry the branch suffix and updates will not flow:

wp plugin install https://github.com/rynoceris/texon-flipbook/archive/refs/heads/main.zip
Readme github.com/rynoceris/texon-flipbook ↗

A WordPress plugin that turns any PDF catalog into an interactive page-turn flipbook with clickable hotspots — a self-hosted alternative to FlipSnack / Issuu.

Built for Texon Towel, but works with any PDF.

Features

  • Realistic page-turn viewer powered by StPageFlip — smooth page curl, touch/swipe, keyboard arrows
  • PDF → JPG pre-rendering via Ghostscript (preferred) or Imagick, so page loads are instant
  • Clickable hotspots — draw rectangles over any page and point them at product URLs, categories, external sites; opens in a new tab
  • Two embed modes — inline on a page, or a button that opens the flipbook in a full-screen modal
  • Per-catalog hotspot editor — click-and-drag to draw, drag to move, drag corner to resize, right-click to delete, autosaves via AJAX
  • URL → filesystem path auto-conversion — paste any PDF URL (media library URL, site-relative path, etc.) and the plugin resolves it to the correct server path

Requirements

  • WordPress 5.5+
  • PHP 7.4+
  • Either Ghostscript (/usr/bin/gs) OR the Imagick PHP extension (for PDF rendering)

Installation

  1. Download/clone into wp-content/plugins/texon-flipbook/
  2. Activate Texon Flipbook in the WordPress admin
  3. Go to Flipbooks in the admin sidebar → Add New

Usage

Create a flipbook

  1. Flipbooks → Add New
  2. Title it (e.g., "2026 Product Guide")
  3. Paste the PDF URL or filesystem path into the PDF Path field, or click Choose from Media Library
  4. Save — the plugin renders all pages to JPGs (~1–2 seconds per page)

Add hotspots

  1. Click Edit Hotspots → from the edit screen
  2. Select a page from the dropdown
  3. Click and drag on the page to draw a hotspot
  4. Enter the destination URL when prompted
  5. Click a hotspot to edit its URL, drag to move, drag the handle to resize, right-click to delete
  6. Changes autosave

Embed on a page

Use one of these shortcodes:

[texon_flipbook id="123"]
[texon_flipbook id="123" height="800"]
[texon_flipbook id="123" trigger="button" label="Browse Our 2026 Catalog"]
  • id — the flipbook ID (shown on the Flipbooks list screen)
  • trigger — inline (default) or button (opens in a modal)
  • label — button text when trigger="button"
  • height — inline embed height in px (default: 700)

Architecture

  • texon-flipbook.php — main plugin bootstrap
  • includes/class-post-type.php — texon_flipbook custom post type for storing flipbooks
  • includes/class-renderer.php — PDF → JPG rendering (Ghostscript or Imagick)
  • includes/class-admin.php — admin screens, AJAX save, URL/path normalization
  • includes/class-shortcode.php — [texon_flipbook] shortcode
  • assets/flipbook.js / .css — front-end viewer
  • assets/admin.js / .css — admin hotspot editor
  • vendor/page-flip.browser.js — StPageFlip v2.0.7 (MIT)

Hotspots are stored as percentages (0–1) of page dimensions, so they stay accurate at any viewer size.

License

MIT