About Research on Plugin
We can add a plugin for estimating Post Reading Time in WordPress. The easiest way to add estimated post-reading time is by using the Read Meter plugin. It’s a free WordPress plugin that helps you show the reading time and progress bar on your website.
First, activate the Read Meter plugin. Upon activation, you need to visit the Settings » Read Meter page from your WordPress admin panel to configure the plugin settings.
Post-reading time functionality without plugin
We can develop a function that calculates the read time of each post. A sample code attaching below:
//estimated reading time
function reading_time() {
$content = get_field(‘post_description_field_1’, $post->ID);
$word_count = str_word_count( strip_tags( $content ) );
$readingtime = ceil($word_count / 200);
if ($readingtime == 1) {
$timer = ” minute”;
} else {
$timer = ” minutes”;
}
$totalreadingtime = $readingtime . $timer;
return $totalreadingtime;
}
Function can be define in functions.php. Here, we are calculating the average time of a person that reads 200 words per minute.