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Generate beautiful paginated PDFs from WordPress posts and pages with proper page-bottom footnotes, powered by Paged.js.

Description

Paged WP Modern turns your WordPress posts and pages into paginated, print-ready documents with proper page-bottom footnotes — directly in your browser.

The problem it solves: If you import Word documents into WordPress using Mammoth, your footnotes become endnotes (a list at the bottom of the HTML). Every existing WordPress PDF plugin renders those as endnotes too. This plugin converts them back into real page-bottom footnotes using Paged.js and the CSS Paged Media specification.

How it works:

1. Click "Paged Preview" in the post/page editor (works with both Classic Editor and Gutenberg)
2. A new tab opens showing your content laid out as paginated A4/Letter pages
3. Footnotes from Mammoth-imported documents are automatically detected and moved to the bottom of the correct page
4. Press Ctrl+P / ⌘P and choose "Save as PDF"

Features:

• Proper page-bottom footnotes (not endnotes) from Mammoth and Pandoc HTML
• Works with both Gutenberg and Classic Editor
• Customizable page CSS (page size, margins, fonts, etc.)
• Running headers and page numbers
• Alternating journal/volume and article running heads, omitted on the opening page
• Centred journal-style folios in a restrained sans serif
• Excerpt-driven, professionally typeset abstract with an inline customizable label
• Balanced print treatment for arbitrary imported paragraph left padding from Mammoth/Word
• Unified sans-serif blue title matter, running furniture, folios, and footnote markers
• Slightly softened footnote text and publication furniture for visual hierarchy
• [paged_download] shortcode for front-end "View as PDF" button
• Clean, professional default typography
• Enhanced academic microtypography by default, with progressive browser fallbacks
• Resilient image loading: damaged or stalled images cannot truncate the article
• Local bundled Paged.js — no runtime CDN dependency
• Locally bundled Source Serif 4 variable font with optical sizing and system-serif fallback
• Updates from tagged GitHub releases through the normal WordPress updater
• Configurable footnote detection (works out of the box with Mammoth and Pandoc patterns)
• No server-side dependencies — runs entirely in the browser using Paged.js

Supported footnote formats:

• Mammoth .docx converter (WordPress plugin) — footnotes and endnotes
• Pandoc-generated HTML (.footnote-ref links)
• Any tool that produces superscript links pointing to an endnote list

Installation

1. Download the plugin zip file
2. Go to Plugins → Add New → Upload Plugin
3. Upload the zip and activate
4. Open any post or page in the editor and click "Paged Preview"

Configuration

Go to Settings → Paged WP Modern to:

• Toggle author name and date display
• Customize the abstract label, blue accent, label font, spacing, and treatment
• Customize alternating journal/volume and article running heads
• Customize the CSS selector used to detect footnote callouts (default works with Mammoth and Pandoc)
• Add custom Paged Media CSS (change page size, margins, fonts, etc.)
• Choose enhanced or standard browser typography
• Configure image and pagination timeouts
• Opt into unattended installation of tagged GitHub releases

Common CSS customizations:

/* US Letter instead of A4 */
@page { size: letter; }

/* 1-inch margins */
@page { margin: 1in; }

/* Sans-serif font */
body { font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; }

/* No running headers */
@page { @top-center { content: none; } }

Shortcode

Add a "View as PDF" button to any post or page:

[paged_download]
[paged_download text="Download PDF version"]
[paged_download text="Print version" class="my-custom-button" style=""]

How Footnotes Work

When Mammoth converts a Word .docx file to HTML, footnotes become:

• Inline: <sup><a href="#post-123-footnote-1">[1]</a></sup>
• At bottom: <ol><li id="post-123-footnote-1">Footnote text</li></ol>

This plugin's JavaScript detects these callout links, extracts the footnote text, creates inline <span> elements with float: footnote CSS, and removes the original endnote list. Paged.js then lays out these spans at the bottom of the correct page during pagination.

Requirements

• Chrome or Chromium-based browser (Edge, Brave, etc.) for best results. Firefox has partial support. Safari is not recommended.
• Posts must be published (or at least saved with a permalink) for the preview to work.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why does it only work well in Chrome?

Paged.js relies on the browser's rendering engine to lay out pages. Chrome/Chromium provides the most consistent results. Firefox works but may have minor layout differences. Safari has known issues with Paged.js.

Can visitors download PDFs without Ctrl+P?

The current version requires the browser print dialog. Fully automated PDF generation would require a server-side headless browser (Puppeteer/Chrome), which is a planned future feature.

Does it work with footnotes from other sources?

Yes — you can configure the CSS selector in Settings to match any footnote HTML pattern. The default selector works with Mammoth and Pandoc output.

Changelog

2.2.3

• Removed empty Mammoth footnote callouts and their return-link-only endnotes instead of leaving an orphan list marker on the final page
• Preserved the consumed footnote number so later footnotes and textual cross-references retain their source numbering
• Added a browser regression fixture matching the empty footnote 3 observed in a live article

2.2.2

• Fixed malformed Mammoth endnotes containing direct text plus a parser-created empty paragraph
• Prevented those notes from leaking out of the hidden endnote list onto the final PDF page
• Added regression fixtures matching the malformed footnotes 76 and 78 observed in a live article
• Restored abstract prose to the body-text colour at 0.8 opacity while retaining its blue sans-serif label

2.2.1

• Fixed existing installations silently omitting abstracts because of a stale pre-abstract visibility option
• Added a fresh default-visible abstract/subtitle control while retaining an explicit “Always hide” choice
• Balanced any inline paragraph left-padding value and unit on the right for quotation-like Mammoth/Word passages
• Suppressed ordinary first-line indentation on imported indented passages
• Unified title, author, dates, configurable header lines, citations, Abstract label, running heads, folios, and footnote markers in the customizable blue sans-serif publication style
• Matched footnote call and marker size to the 9pt footnote text and slightly softened the complete footnote area
• Added Libertinus Sans as the first publication-font choice when the site provides it, with the existing system-sans fallback
• Added browser and generated-PDF checks for arbitrary-unit quotation padding and coordinated publication furniture

2.2.0

• Added a publication-style abstract sourced from the WordPress excerpt by default
• Set the abstract in a narrower justified measure, smaller serif type, and softened CLP blue
• Added an inline bold sans-serif abstract label with configurable double/triple spacing
• Added abstract label, colour, font, and unruled/rule/panel presentation settings
• Added alternating journal/volume and article-title running heads after the opening page
• Added automatic site-title and citation-volume template tags for journal running matter
• Centred and restyled folios consistently on every page
• Added browser and generated-PDF regression coverage for abstracts, running heads, folios, and print-only UI exclusion

2.1.2

• Kept the useful print toolbar visible on screen but completely absent from printed PDFs
• Added a post-pagination print stylesheet plus before/after-print safeguards
• Added browser regression coverage for screen and print toolbar visibility

2.1.1

• Fixed the unpaginated source article remaining visible above the paginated output
• Paginate a detached source clone while retaining the original only as an error fallback
• Added regression coverage preventing duplicate visible article content

2.1.0

• Prevented stalled image requests from silently truncating articles
• Added resource preflight, timeouts, visible diagnostics, and end-of-document verification
• Added professional academic microtypography as the progressive default
• Constrained oversized figures to the printable page area
• Hardened footnote detection, ID handling, repeated references, and error isolation
• Bundled Paged.js locally and removed the runtime CDN dependency
• Added GitHub Actions validation, release ZIP builds, and GitHub release updates
• Added browser regression tests for valid and permanently pending images

2.0.0

• Complete rewrite based on Paged WP by Electric Book Works
• Added proper footnote support via Paged.js footnotes module
• Added Mammoth-specific endnote-to-footnote conversion
• Added Gutenberg editor support
• Added [paged_download] shortcode
• Added settings page with custom CSS editor
• Updated to Paged.js 0.4.3
• Fixed PHP 8.1+ deprecation warnings
• Modernized code structure

Credits

• Paged.js by the Coko Foundation — the engine that makes this possible
• Source Serif 4 by Adobe — the default publication serif (SIL Open Font License)
• Electric Book Works — original Paged WP plugin (v1.0.3)
• Mammoth by Michael Williamson — the Word-to-HTML converter