5 Best Responsive WordPress Document Library Plugins

Wondering how best to upload and publish your documents with categories? 

Well, if you have WordPress documents, presentations, and spreadsheets that need displaying, these plugins help!

Use WordPress Document Library Plugins to Maximize Your Workflow

The more organized your elements, the more your workflow. The document library WordPress plugins help you manage, organize, and display various content and media on your website.

The use of the document library plugins is to handle large amounts of media files, documents, or information. Here’s why you might need WordPress library plugins and the benefits they offer:

Efficient Content Management: Library plugins help you organize media files, such as images, videos, audio, etc., into categories and folders, making it easier to manage and retrieve them when needed. You can also manage a library of documents, such as PDFs, word files, excel files, etc.
Media Galleries: Create professional-looking media galleries to showcase images, videos, and other media in an organized format.
Bulk Management: Manage multiple files simultaneously, such as bulk uploads, edits, and deletions, saving time and effort.
SEO-Friendly URLs: Generate SEO-friendly URLs for media files and documents, improving their visibility in search engine results.
Automatic Indexing: Automatically index and categorize content, reducing the manual workload of organizing large libraries.

Best WordPress Document Library Plugins

Today, we have created a list of the best 5 WordPress document library plugins to give you all the features you need to create a full-fledged WordPress document gallery. Some even help you tweak columns, sort by file size, and add cool cover images and descriptions.

Keep reading to find the best sidekick for your WordPress landing page.

CatFolders

Are you tired of sifting through countless files trying to find the right document on your WordPress website? 

With CatFolders category folders, you can easily organize and display all your documents in a visually appealing gallery format. Say goodbye to the days of endless scrolling and browsing through boring file lists. With CatFolders Document Gallery, you can showcase your important documents, presentations, or portfolios with just a few clicks. 

With CatFolders, customizing and publishing the PDF listing template is very easy. Once the folder is added, all you need to do is to show/hide the built-in options.

It supports all document file types like PDF (Adobe Portable Document Format), Microsoft Word Document, PowerPoint, Apple document formats, .prc, .epub, .mobi, graphics, etc.

As a viewer on the page, you can click on the document name to preview the file on a popup window or click Download to save it to your computer. Moreover, adjusting the pagination, running an instant search, or sorting the items by type/date is also super handy.

Features

Create a document list overview page.
Share a list of your uploaded documents with download links.
Display documents in a grid gallery template.
Lightweight and mobile-responsive.

Pros

Clean design.
Compatible with all WordPress block themes.
Modern filetype thumbnails.
Free and downloadable from WordPress.org.

Cons

If you want to sort documents by file size, use the CatFolders Pro version.

FileBird

Being the best WordPress media file manager, FileBird has an addon to help you easily publish documents on the front end. It takes you 3 simple steps to display a document library. Firstly, files should be organized into WordPress media folders. Secondly, choose a folder from the Gutenberg block settings. Finally, customize the appearance and publish it!

This can also generate a shortcode to help you show the FileBird document library in Elementor and other theme builders.

Regarding a document library, the FileBird Document Library block has a clean design for filetype thumbnails in Gutenberg and the classic editor.

Even more powerfully, FileBird helps you organize pages, posts, custom post types, WooCommerce products, and lists into folders!

Features

Show/Hide columns.
Customize columns and items per page on the front end.
Built-in shortcode builder for publishing document galleries to third-party WordPress page builders.

Pros

Lifetime license: Pay once, use, and get updates for a lifetime.
Includes dynamic image gallery. 
Well-structured folder organization for better WordPress media management.

Cons

If you want to display the document library on other page builders like Oxygen or Beaver Builder, you have to buy the premium version from Codecanyon.

Filr

If you wish to create secure document libraries, go with Filr and enable users to manage, view, and upload files on your website.

Filr ships with encrypted URLs, a mobile-friendly table to display your files, and support to manage files in folders.

Features

Create and manage document libraries.
Upload files from the front end.
Create secure download URLs.
Automatically zip multiple files together.
Expire access to files by usage and date.
Restrict access by user role and specific users.

Pros

The free version offers decent features.
Responsive design.
Fast-loading pages.

Cons

Filr document list offers no file type icons or thumbnails.

Barn2 Document Library

This is a great premium plugin to add downloadable files and display them in a flexible table view.

Instead of a shortcode visual builder, the Barn2 plugin provides shortcode options like lightbox, docs_per_page, sort_by, scroll_offset, etc. These help WordPress publishers customize the initial appearance of the document library. Yet, it may require a learning curve for first-time users.

To upgrade the gallery template, go with the Pro version, and you will get a dozen more premium shortcode options. You can easily check out these features on their demo site.

This plugin integrates well with advanced features like custom fields and e-commerce currency switchers.

Features

Display document folders and subfolders on the front end.
Preview text documents, spreadsheets, audio, and more.
AJAX search box to find documents instantly.

Pros

Quality code.
Offers flexible shortcode.
Lazy load and caching options are available in the premium plugin.

Cons

A limited number of documents are in the free version.
A single-site annual license costs $99, which may not be ideal for most WordPress starter sites.

EmbedPress

EmbedPress offers a mobile-responsive interface on the front end to help your users quickly have a look at the embedded documents. It supports Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, Portable Document Format (PDF), text files, and more.

Below is a sample page of documents published by native Gutenberg block versus EmbedPress blocks.

Pros

It has tons of extensive features.
Great for individual document preview.
Integrates with Google Drive to help you offload documents, maps, spreadsheets, or presentations.

Cons

The gallery list templates are not provided.
EmbedPress categorization system offers only taxonomies, which means it’s not easy to rearrange documents in bulk.

Which Is the Best WordPress Document Library Plugin?

Imagine having a beautifully designed gallery on your WordPress website that allows users to search for and access the documents they need effortlessly. Not only will this save you time and frustration, but it will also impress your visitors with a professional and user-friendly library template. 

That being said, the best pick depends on whether you’re a business owner, educator, or freelancer. 

CatFolders Document Gallery or FileBird Document Library would be your best bet today for bloggers, solopreneurs, and educators! It offers modern responsive galleries in list and grid styles. Hence, it is the perfect tool to enhance your WordPress website’s functionality and overall appeal. 

Barn2 Document Library can be a great solution for larger organizations and bureaucratic office sites. As they feature a well-aligned template, it goes well with classic organizations. It might take some time to familiarize yourself with this advanced interface.

If you’re selling membership or offering exclusive content that is only accessible to a group of users, then Filr’s protected document library is your best choice!

What’s next? Don’t miss out on this game-changing solution for managing your documents in WordPress! Now download the Document Library for WordPress plugin and enjoy the benefits of an organized document library today. 

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