Additional Text Boxes

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  ellwal · Member · Apr 20, 2016 at 12:01 pm

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  Okay, I don’t know if this feature exists or not, and I don’t know the official term for it, which makes it tricky to search for on the Support site.

  Right now, my posts involve a lot of footnotes, which I have set up through a complicated series of anchors jumping down to the bottom for the side-comment, then back up to the paragraph where the footnote was originally referenced. I’m looking for a more reader-friendly alternative that won’t force the reader to keep moving up and down the page, but won’t break up the main point of the text with lengthy parentheticals.

  Ideally, what I want are miniature text boxes like xkcd’s What If? series uses, where the footnote mark appears in the text like normal, but instead of taking you elsewhere on the page when you click on it, it just pops up a little text box hovering over the page right there, then dismisses it when you click again.

  Is there anything similar to that system that WordPress supports?

  The blog I need help with is acmetoaster.wordpress.com.

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  ellwal · Member · Apr 22, 2016 at 1:16 pm

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  Bumping this with the answer I’ve found, just in case anyone else has the same question.

  Per this incredibly helpful article, it’s totally possible, but only if you host your own site and aren’t using the free wordpress.com domain.

  So in my case, looks like I’m SOL, but if you’re hosting your own and want to do the same trick, there’s pretty comprehensive instructions in that article for how to get it done.

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  writesrealgood · Member · Apr 22, 2016 at 1:33 pm

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  You CAN do this from within WordPress.com, but only on the paid plans.
  https://wordpress.com/pricing/

  Premium plan gets you access to Custom Design, of which CSS jiggery pokery is a part.
  https://en.support.wordpress.com/custom-design/

  This will surely be affordable once your AMA format takes off. Hope you get some good questions.

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  ellwal · Member · Apr 23, 2016 at 2:26 am

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  Thanks!

  I was already thinking of going Premium at some point down the road anyhow, so I’ll keep that bookmark handy for when I can play with it some more, and stick with my manic footnote-based ramblings in the meantime.