LATEST BLOG
Engage Your Audience with Highlighter
Discover how you can deliver a much richer experience for your audience by increasing the level of engagement on your website using a revolutionary WordPress plug-in. We’ll show you how to install this plug-in and get it setup with your WordPress blog. Then get your readers to start conversations on a contextual level revolving around words, sentences and images found on your website.
The Highligher plug-in is the latest offering from the masterminds behind Unique Blog Designs. Below is a quick video overview of what the hype is all about.
Most blog readers are used to leaving comments at the bottom of each post. This traditional way of commenting can get frustrating especially on popular posts where you will need to scroll all the way down just to leave a comment. It can also be cumbersome when you’re trying to follow specific conversations and there’s no easy way to visually identify the topic and the involved parties.
With the Highlighter, readers can now highlight any word, sentence or image and immediately leave a comment right there and then (see Figure 1.0). Additional sharing options are also available particularly via Email, Facebook and Twitter. The beauty about this is that other readers will see which words, sentences and/or images have been highlighted and can just easily mouse over them to view the comments.
Figure 1.0 – Highlighter sharing via Comment
Publishers need not worry as the plug-in offers support for Akismet spam filtering to battle those annoying spammers and also supports comment moderation.
One of the most powerful features of Highlighter is its ability to capture your reader’s email address and get it automatically added to your email list. As of this writing only Aweber, MailChimp and GetResponse are supported. For Campaign Monitor users have no fear, I did get in touch with Highlighter’s Co-Founder Matthew Blancarte a couple of days ago and here’s what he had to say,
"We actually have someone in our community that is looking into building this feature by next week! Please visit this thread to stay up to date. 
"
Highlighter not only makes your readers happy by enriching their engagement experience, it also increases the publishers opportunity to monetize their sites. The best part of it all is that this plug-in is free!
How To Install and Setup Highlighter in WordPress
This tutorial is only targeted for self-hosted WordPress blogs.
STEP 1: Download Highlighter
STEP 2: Log into your WordPress account (www.yourdomain.com/wp-admin) and on the left column under Plugins, click on “Add New”.
STEP 3: Under the Install Plugins click on “Upload”.
STEP 4: Browse to your downloaded zip file called Highlighter.zip.
STEP 5: Click Install then Activate.
In five easy steps, you should have Highlighter downloaded and activated. Now let’s get it setup so your readers can start Highlighting!
In your WordPress Dashboard, you should now have a Highlighter menu option on the left menu. Click on it to access Highlighter’s setup options.
General Tab
Under the General tab, you have the option of selecting an email marketing provider. Depending on what you select you may need to get your respective email list name, email list ID and/or API Key.
Appearance Tab
Under the appearance tab you can change the highlight colour and as of this writing there are only two available colour schemes.
In the next section, I’ve enabled the Count Chiclet (see Figure 2.0) which will appear above your posts. I’ve also enabled the Highlight Box (see Figure 3.0) which will appear below your post. It is important to specify a certain width to accommodate your page layout. In the following example, I’ve set the width to 570px.
Advanced Tab
In the advanced tab, make sure to tick the first two boxes to enable Akismet spam filtering and highlight/comment moderation.
If you’ve configured everything correctly, you should now be able to highlight any word, sentences and/or images in each of your blog post page and have the highlighter pop-up menu come up.
You should also have the following components installed: Highlighter Widget, Highlighter Count Chiclet and Highlighter Highlight Box.
Figure 2.0 – Count Chiclet showing one highlight
Figure 3.0 – Highlight Box
Quick Tip For The Technically Inclined
It is important that
<?php wp_head(); ?>
and
<?php wp_footer(); ?>
are called inside your header.php and footer.php files respectively. Otherwise Highlighter will not work.
That’s all there is to it! Happy Highlighting!
Photo by: Just Jefa
Written by Angelo Beltran
Angelo Beltran is a freelance designer who recognizes that design and marketing are one and the same. He's passionate about branding and corporate identity. Follow his tweets over at Twitter.
One Comment
Dino Dogan said...
Murray from murlu.com and I talked about this few months ago. Google had something similar with one of their failed projects and we thought how cool would it be to have something like this. Im totally stoked to see its out and Im installing this on my blog asap.
Thnx for bringing it to my attention.
Leave a Comment