Highlight Author Comments

Highlight Author Comments automatically displays comments made by a post’s author in a distinctive style with no need to edit your template files, etc. All you do is provide a snippet or two of CSS styling to be applied to author posts.

Version History

• Version 1.0.2
  • Workaround for WP bug that failed to style the first paragraph as a paragraph
• Version 1.0.1
  • Added the ability to style the comment author link
  • Added some security with nonces
• Version 1.0.0
  • Initial version

Highlight Author Comments is installed in 3 easy steps:

1. Unzip the “Highlight Author Comments” archive and copy the folder to /wp-content/plugins/
2. Activate the plugin
3. Use the Options > Highlight Comment admin page to enter the CSS styling you want to apply to author comments.

What Do I Enter in the Options Page?

The plugin Options page just has couple of text boxes where you put the bits of CSS you want to apply to highlighted comments. Don’t include { or }: just the CSS. For example, by default the plugin applies the CSS padding: 1em which ‘indents’ the comment a little all round. If you wanted to also make the text red, for example, you would use color: red; padding: 1em.

You can style the body of the comment itself and/or the link to the comment author.

CSS Styling… What’s That?

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is too complex a subject to go into here. A good resource is provided by the Web Design Group.

How About Some Examples?

Here’s where some artistry would be a help! In lieu of skill here are some examples to play with:

• padding: 1em;
• padding-left: 20px;
• background-color: #FFFF95;
• border-left: 1em solid #DDD; padding: 1em;
• background: white url(http://www.yourblog.com/images/fluffy-clouds.gif)
• background-color: silver; margin-left: -2em; padding: 1em 1em 1em 2em;
• etc.

How Does It Know Which Comments to Highlight?

The plugin simply compares the email of the post author with the email of the commentor. This works fine as long as a post author is logged in when commenting. It will fail if the author is not logged in and uses a different email.