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Free WP Couch Mode

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WP Couch Mode

Plugin Author: Ritesh Vatwani

Jay Hoffmann

October 31, 2014 (modified on May 25, 2018)

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On content-driven sites, there may be times when users want to settle back and just read your post content in full-screen mode, without sidebars or links or menus. WP Couch Mode gives your users this option. Of course, your first solution, in this case, should be to provide a cleaner experience for users. But, if you want to give users the ability to enlarge your content a bit more, then this plugin is certainly an option.

What’s it Do?

WP Couch Mode adds a link to your posts which open up your post’s main content in a separate pop-up window that fills the screen. This allows users to read your post in a distraction-free setting where the focus is on content. From within this pop-up, users can also enter full-screen mode, where the content will fill the entire screen. The styles of this “read mode” are inherited from your theme, and the link for users to open the pop-up can be appended or prepended to your post, or inserted using a custom shortcode.

WP Couch Mode is ideal for sites where a comfortable reading experience would be useful to your readers, or when you want to put an emphasis on your content.

How’s it Work?

After you install and activate the plugin, a “Read Mode” link will be placed at the bottom of all of your posts and pages. If you navigate to a post and click this link, you will see that your post’s content will open up in a white pop-up window, and your content will take up the full width. Sidebars and menus will be removed in this window. This pop-up window is automatically resized to take up about 90% of the full screen. You will also see a button for users to enter full-screen mode which will bring this up to 100%.

To edit how this works, you can visit Settings -> Read Mode. Here, you will see a few options. The first is “Read Mode Link”, where you can select where you want to put the link. You can either automatically add it to before or after content (on posts and pages) or choose to add it selectively with a shortcode. If you choose the latter option, then you will have to insert the link manually using a simple shortcode in your post editor:

[read_mode]

Or, you can use the do_shortcode function in your template’s PHP files.

 echo do_shortcode('[read_mode]'); 

Below this, you can change the text of the link itself. By default, it will say “Read Mode”, but you may want to consider changing it to something else like “Distraction-Free Mode” or “Read Fullscreen”. The last option is to “Resize Popup” which you should leave at “Yes.”

Full screen post view

Full-screen post view

Everything else will automatically be added to your posts and pages, and users can start reading in couch mode right away. This feature is responsive friendly, so it will resize based on mobile devices or larger screens like televisions, always putting your content at the forefront.

Costs, Caveats, Etc.

WP Couch Mode is completely free and is still fairly new, but already has seen a few updates. It does load in an external JS and CSS file but keeps things very lightweight, especially considered its functionality. If you run into a problem, you can visit the plugin’s support forums to get help straight from the developer.

Resources

Plugin Info
  • Downloads: 1,878+
  • Downloads trend (30d): -41.7%
  • Active installations: 10+
  • Rating:
  • Last Update: September 23rd, 2014
  • Download Plugin for Free