I’ve been using a plugin by Jennifer (the Scripty Goddess) for quite some time. It is a plugin that modifies the [More] tag in your posts using Javascript to open the rest of the post content in the current position on the same page. Back when I used Movable Type, it was an easy modification. In WordPress, Jennifer made it an easy modification as well by converting it to a plugin.

Well, then I wanted to change the words used for the [More} tag. You see, the plugin had default values of "Read more" (to read more on a new page), "Read more right here" (to use Javascript to see the rest of the post in the current position on the same page) and "Hide" (to use Javascript to hide the rest of the post opened by "Read more right here"). I thought, "No problem. I'll just hack the plugin and put in my own values." Yeah, I can do that. All I gotta do is find where those words were located and then replace them.

Next, I thought, "Why go through and change those values when I can make them into variables and declare the variables in one place. That would make hacking the plugin easier." Yeah, I can do that too. And it did make it easier, but I still had to manually hack the plugin. Then I did the blog setup for Jason, and it got me thinking on a different track. Now Jason is a very intelligent guy but in his own words he's a n00b. While I am in no way/shape/form l337, I can hack my way around PHP. I thought "Why not make the plugin customizable via the Admin Panel?" Thus the Content Show/Hide plugin was born.

The plugin has only been tested on my test/development WordPress site (using Webserver on a Stick as a base for WordPress on a Stick) and my personal blog. Both of these have WordPress version 2.x on them. It is just as easy as any other plugin for WordPress. Simply drop the file into your plugins folder, then go to the WordPress Plugins Admin Panel and activate the ContentShowHide plugin. To configure your messages, go to the WordPress Manage Admin Panel and select "ShowHide". There are three fields with default values for you to use. There are a couple of caveats:

• You MUST define at least one of the first two fields. In other words, you must use either the "Show more on another page" or "Show more right here" fields. If both are left blank, a default message (from Jennifer's original plugin) is inserted for the "Show more on another page" so that the [More] tag works.
• If you define the “Show more right here” field and do not define the “Hide” field, a default message (again, from Jennifer’s original plugin) will be inserted for the “Hide” field. This is so the reader can close up the “Show more right here” part of the entry.

So there you have it. It’s a minor modification to Jennifer’s hard work. I thank her for putting in the hard work and I hope to make it easily customizable for all.

You can download the plugin here.