Highlight Author Comments

Caveat

Unfortunately, due to ill-health, this plugin has not been developed or supported properly for some years. It works with the latest versions of WordPress (including on this website) but could possibly conflict with any WordPress features added after 2008 — e.g. custom post types — if you use them.

Purpose

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 of CSS styling to be applied to author posts.

This is version 1.0.3 download latest version.

  • 1.0.3 accommodates inconsistencies in case of the email addresses used to locate author posts.
  • 1.0.2 adds new option to style the comment author link as well as the comment body; also fixes the collapsing paragraph bug.
  • 1.0.0 is the original version.

Installation Instructions

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.

Frequently Asked Questions

What Do I Enter in the Options Page?

The plugin Options page just has one text box where you put the bit 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.

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:

  1. padding: 1em;
  2. padding-left: 20px;
  3. background-color: #FFFF95;
  4. border-left: 1em solid #DDD; padding: 1em;
  5. background: white url(http://www.yourblog.com/images/fluffy-clouds.gif)
  6. background-color: silver; margin-left: -2em; padding: 1em 1em 1em 2em;
  7. 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 an uses a different email.

167 replies on “Highlight Author Comments”

  1. Just so you know, this plug-in won’t be needed if you’re using WP 2.7 or above – at least if you’re using one of the default themes or one that the theme author has updated properly to take into account WP 2.7’s new comment features.

    The latest versions of WorPress automatically add different classes to the comments depending on the role of who posts them – so an author gets class=”bypostauthor” for example. There;s others too, all listed on the WordPress site. This makes it real easy to style author/admin comments and make them stand out from the rest!

  2. hello
    I’ve been using this plugin for a while now, like a charm.
    I wan to use it now to highlight not just the comment’s posted by the ahthor, but by two or three people, let’s say the admins, i used this code but.. :

    else if(strlower($comment->comment_authot_email)== "XXXXX@hotmail.com" or (strlower($comment->comment_authot_email)=="XXXXX@hotmail.com")) 
    		{
    		$options = get_option('hac_highlight_author_comments');
    		return '<div style="'.$options['highlight_style'].'"><p>'.$content.'</div>';
    	}

    but it is not working

  3. I have a question…

    Can be used not only for the post’s autor, but all the autors in the blog??

    Thanks, i’m downloading it..

  4. I like the plugin and will be using it on my project that I’m currently developing.

    I do have one suggestion though. I recommend adding a class to the div that you place around the comments. This way I’ll be able to style the div (or anything within it) within my own CSS rather than having to do it through the admin area.

    I’ve edited the plugin file to add class=”authorcomment” but it would be cool if that was included by default just to give us the option.

    Thanks for the plugin!

  5. Is there anyone using this plugin to highlight both the site owner’s and other readers’ comments?

    I wanna see how it looks

    And what’s the plugin used to give commenters MCE type capability to comment

  6. Easiest plugin for this purpose. Don’t even need to worry about the nested comments: This accomplishes close to the same thing and with so much ease. Thanks.

  7. I just installed and started using. it is so handy and useful. Where was this all the while when I was struggling. Anyway thank you so much. This is very helpful for me atleast.

  8. A plugin where you have to know CSS code? And a support link which is basically a whole CSS training program? When the overwhelming majority of people who use WordPress don’t do code?

    Doesn’t make a lot of sense.

    Even a few simple eg’s of specifically what to key into the two boxes would have been useful. Most people could work it out from there.

  9. thanks it is very good plugin. but i don,t know what should i add for Style the author link:

    Please help me give the Style to author link:
    i don’t know about css so need some codes .

    thanks

Comments are closed.