Discussion posts are some of my favourite posts to read. New ideas get shared that way, or old ideas are revisited and given a new spin. And of course, I get to be my opinionated self as I hoist my views upon others, while pretending to be objective. Or maybe not. I do welcome alternate views and I’d love to hear from you in the comments!
Two weeks ago I talked about spoilers and how they are the worst. I then explained how to use spoiler tags on Goodreads and BookLikes.
Since then I’ve seen a fair amount of tweets that were full of rants against spoilers, so I figured it’s about time I posted the second part of my guide to properly spoiling tweets. Spoiler tags and hiding reviews on Goodreads and BookLikes are extremely straightforward affairs, so I don’t think there is any excuse when people spoil books for others. Figuring how to do this on a blog however, is more difficult to figure out. There are various ways to do this. Even if one has no idea how to elegantly hide spoilers, there are steps anyone should be able to employ:
- Show only excerpts on the homepage. That way visitors can choose if they want to read a particular review or not.
- If the whole reviews is spoiler-induced, include a conspicuous warning/ disclaimer at the top of the post.
- Change the font colour to blend in with the background, so that the text is only visible when highlighting it with a mouse.
- Example: Highlight to see spoiler » See, that isn’t so hard!
- This is not an elegant solution but it works. For anyone on WordPress.com without the option to modify their theme, this would be my answer.
- If you don’t use excerpts on the homepage, at least use the <!--more--> tag, so that the rest of the post will be hidden with a “Read More” link for the rest of the post.
- My favourite solution is the Ultimate Book Blogger Plugin. All you have to do is use the following code: [spoiler] Insert your spoiler here. [/spoiler]
- Example: Here is some visible text. View Spoiler »
- The UBB Plugin does cost money, which not everyone is able to shell out. A lot more can be done with the plugin though for those who decide to buy it. Ashley @ Nose Graze came up with the plugin and regularly updates it. As a book blogger, she knows very well what we look for to simplify our blogging experience.
- It doesn’t result in seemingly huge chunks of blank spaces.
- This only works on self-hosted WordPress blogs.
- Look for a plugin that will allow you to easily insert spoilers into your posts. While I’ve never used it myself, JQuery Expanding Box should work alright.
- It’s free.
- Once again, this only works for self-hosted WordPress blogs.
Those who know how to code can use JavaScript or jQuery effects. I have no idea how that works. Then again, those who do probably don’t need to be told to hide their spoilers.
If you are feeling adventurous and feel confident about editing theme files, or are hosting your blog on Blogger, you can also refer to Ashley’s tutorials on how to hide spoilers in your reviews and her alternative method for hiding longer spoilers.
Do spoilers bother you? If you write book reviews, how do you hide your spoilers?
Oh I always wondered how people got “view spoiler” to work on their blogs! That’s so cool. I chose to take myself off self-hosting, but if I ever decided to do that again in the future I would DEFINITELY get Ashley’s plug-in. Everyone seems to think it’s awesome and totally worth the money.
This is really cool! I used to do the thing where I change the color of the font but now that I have a transparent background, it doesn’t work so well. I usually make sure to warn readers of spoilers in my reviews at the very beginning and I think that works. A lot of people have commented that they didn’t read my review bc of spoilers which is good bc that means it’s productive and that people see it!
Yep! There are so many different ways to hide spoilers or warn readers that a post contains spoilers. Sadly, not everyone abides by that. I’m glad to know that adding a disclaimer is just as effective as hiding spoilers!