Shankar Ganesh

Just another WordPress site

Tools to print blog posts

with 25 comments

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If you’ve built up a huge amount of quality articles on your blog that are worth preserving, and reading offline – you may want to give your readers a choice to print out content. It isn’t that tough to do that, so here goes a list of three tools that let you integrate a print functionality to your blog posts:

HP’s Smart Web Printing Widget

HP has a blog printing widget that adds a print option to all your blog posts. Clicking on it, a reader will be able to print stuff that includes the written content, images etc. Sidebars and other unwanted things are not considered for printing.

HP Blog Post Printing Window

You can see the widget live on TechCrunch and other major blogs. A dialog appears on clicking the Print option. Select the posts that you need to print, get them as PDFs into your hard disk, and print them. It can be integrated into your Movable Type or WordPress blog easily. Get the plugins here.

Blog Printing.com – Let your reader purchase print-outs

Blog Printing is another service that allows you to add a printing functionality to your blog. Supported platforms include WordPress, Movable Type and TypePad. Note that Blogger is not supported.

On creating a user account, you can place their code on your blog. Readers will be able to purchase printed copies of your articles at a rate. They can choose the date range, and get your content printed as a booklet. You can make custom covers for your blog-book as a PDF file.

Black and white books cost $7.50 for the first 28 pages, plus 4 cents per page for additional pages. Color books cost $12.00 for the first 28 pages, plus 30 cents per page for additional pages. If you set up an account to resell your blog, you can specify either a percentage or a flat royalty. Any royalties are added to the base cost of the book. Read more in their FAQ section

You can print upto 800 pages in a single volume! When a request exceeds that particular number of pages (800), you get two volumes. Some amount is paid as royalty to you (you can set it to a flat rate or a percentage) – so it’s another income source for bloggers.

WP Print WordPress plugin

This simple, yet useful plugin displays a printable version of your blog post/page when requested. You can get the plugin for your blog from this page

Did you find these tools useful? Do you know of any better ones? And will you be adding a printable version of your posts to your blog for the benefit of your readers? Share your thoughts in the comments.

Written by admin

July 14th, 2007 at 6:37 am

Posted in blogging

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  • http://www.techdeep.in/blog dEEPAK

    The HP widget seems good.. Will consider putting it on my blog..

  • http://www.reviewsaurus.com ReviewSaurus

    3rd one looks good for me, but because it’s only wordpress based, so I think that first two options will be useful for those..who use other platforms.

  • http://www.brownbaron.com/blog/ Brown Baron

    Interesting. I never thought about this. I’ll have to check this one out. Nice going.

  • http://www.kuanhoong.com/ kuanhoong

    Yup Interesting application indeed.
    Stumbled!

  • http://www.shankarganesh.com/ Shankar Ganesh

    @Deepak: It’ll be very cool on your blog.
    @ReviewSaurus: That’s right. But the 2nd one (BlogPrinting.com) doesn’t support Blogger.
    @Brown, Kuanhoong: Thanks guys for the stumble.

  • http://daily-tech-news.blogspot.com/ Ramkarthik

    This is really good. But the thing is that it doesn’t support blogger and I blog in that platform.

  • http://www.myokyawhtun.com Myo Kyaw Htun

    As for me, I like css PRINT. My two wordpress themes are printable without any plugins.

  • http://blogs.mysites-advisor.com Ken Xu

    Wp Print is not working in my blog. But this is a good post! :) Stumbled!

  • http://www.teknobites.com ram

    wordpress plugin may be a good option, good post
    stumbled :-)

  • http://www.helloashok.com/ Ashok Arora

    Nice concept, I think it will become popular and can become a good source of revenue for bloggers.

  • http://www.shankarganesh.com/ Shankar Ganesh

    @Myo Kyaw Htun: Thanks for dropping a word here!
    @Ken Xu, Ram: Thanks for the stumble, guys.
    @Ashok: That’s right. One more way to make money online :D

  • http://one-penny-project.blogspot.com BeachBum

    Awesome find. I know LuLu offers a POD service, but this is right on track for blogging.

    BeachBum

  • http://www.shankarganesh.com/ Shankar Ganesh

    @BeachBum: Glad you liked that.

  • http://www.sizzledcore.com/2007/07/15/speed-linking-july-15-2007/ Speed Linking – July 15, 2007 | Sizzled Core

    [...] Tools to print blog posts – Shankar Ganesh [...]

  • http://mgopinath.blogspot.com Gopinath M

    Shankar,
    Any idea how to add HP Smart printing to Blogger Blogs?

    Cheers

  • http://www.benh.org/techblog Benedict Herold

    I have tried out WP-Print plugin for WordPress before. I have been hearing about HP blog printing service for a while.

    IMO, printing feature would be required mostly for article based blog.

  • http://www.shankarganesh.com/ Shankar Ganesh

    @Gopinath: No idea, may be there should be something else available.
    @Benedict: I agree with you that it’s a good addition to article, reference post kinda blogs.

  • http://www.rishiraj.info Rishi

    I know an another plugin for printing also provide stuff for offline printing in form of PDF. Not getting its name,. Anyways, good article!

  • http://www.nirmaltv.com Nirmal

    I had used the WP plugin for Print functionality. Presently I’m not using any.

  • http://www.shankarganesh.com/ Shankar Ganesh

    @Rishi: The HP widget gets you the posts in PDF format actually, which you can then print.

  • http://www.techzilo.com TechZilo

    i am concerned about wp print plugin – wouldnt it cause duplicate content?

    oh well, i’ll have to un-index it using robots.txt file ;)

  • http://www.shankarganesh.com/ Shankar Ganesh

    @TechZilo: Your comment has both the question and the answer :D

  • http://funnfud.blogspot.com Mansi

    I was interested in printing my posts, mainly recipes…but then again, I am concerned if people can misuse or plagiarize content from my website…is print facility really necessary??

  • http://trilinearjet.wordpress.com/2007/07/15/speed-linking-july-15-2007/ Speed Linking – July 15, 2007 « Trilinearjet’s Weblog

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  • aimee

    Could someone please explain how to add a Print this page button for my blog in a non-computer person terms? Is there and html that I can just insert under add a gadget?
    Send help :)
    AP