Print a page of your website

Want to give your website visitors an easy way to print your web pages or content? This is easy to do and perfect for websites that want to make it easier for their website visitors.

For example, websites that propose online recipes or checklists would benefit from allowing their users to print their recipes for use in the kitchen. Let's see together how we can propose to print a page of your website.

Problems that arise when printing a web page

A web page should not be imagined as a piece of paper. It is not a standard A4 that you can print simply from a text processing software like Word or Google docs. By default a web page generates for the size of a computer screen, be it a mobile phone or a computer.

A web page consists of text, images but can also include videos, slideshows, adverts, widgets, links... and may not be essential when your site users or you want to print a page of your website. If you try to print a page of your website from your web browser, the page will be printed as it is in the web browser, menus, pictures, videos, with weird page formatting (and could be a waste of paper and ink).

There are two solutions :

Create a printable format for site visitors to print simpler (solution 1, longer)
Print your pages from your website browser (solution 2, faster)

Two solutions to ease the printing of your webpages

Solution 1 : Create a printable format (PDF)

You can propose a printable version of your content into a PDF. While this is more work to you as the webmaster, it is the most useful version for your website users who want to print your website content.

You will have then have to create the content twice: The first will be what you will display on your website the other will be as a printable PDF. Once that your PDF is created, add a link towards a file to download. Thus, your website visitors can download and print your content.

We invite you to go to this tutorial to learn how to add a file for download to a page.

Solution 2 : add a "Print" button

This is most assuredly the simplest solution. You will add a simple "Print" button at the bottom of the page or your site. To display and activate this button your will go to setting Settings > Global Settings > Plugins and this tick the box Enable social network sharing.

Select "Print" which is available only with icons in the sizes (16 x 16 px or 32 x 32 px)