Hoverable: A New WordPress Plugin for the Open-Source Community

One of our goals at Forum One is to help our clients achieve a higher level of collaboration. The effective exchange of knowledge is one of the hurdles separating a good organization (or open-source project) from a great one.

An open-source project is only as good as its underlying community. This includes supporting code contributors and helping others in communications channels such as forums and IRC. It also includes listening to those who toss in the occasional idea or constructive criticism. Since we use open-source tools on a daily basis, it is in our own interest to make sure that they continue to innovate and improve over time.

We're no stranger to relying on open-source tools, and it only makes sense to contribute back to the respective communities whenever possible. We've used Drupal and WordPress for dozens of sites thus far, and each site uses plugins or modules that have been contributed by some third-party entity. Without generous community members, Drupal wouldn't have CCK, Views, Panels, and many other essential modules.

In this spirit, Forum One is ramping up our efforts toward contributing back to the Drupal and WordPress communities. For starters, I have added Hoverable to the WordPress.org plugin repository. Hoverable allows you to enter a search string within a blog post or page, and enter some context data for that search string. Whenever a match is found, it will link the search string to a lightbox window, containing the context.

For example, you can use it to show the user a glossary term on a given page, as is done on this page for the new site HealthReformGPS.org. For example, on this page, if you click on a term such as "Exchanges" — or any word with a dashed underline, the term's definition appears in a lightboxed window.

Here's a look behind the scenes. Below is the section of the administrator's interface for Hoverable. The top field includes the search term "start blogging." Its respective context is in the second field.

Below is how it looks on the public side. When the user clicks "start blogging," a lightbox window appears to show the attached context:

Hoverable is a small contribution to the WordPress community, but one we expect will be valued by many.