Awesome Plugin Displays Bible References as Pop-Ups

Posted March 17, 2014 | Laura Christianson

Author Sherri Sand regularly includes scripture references in her devotional blog posts. She asked me whether there is a WordPress plugin that will automatically search her posts for scripture references and display the text of the Bible verses in a pop-up box.

Sure enough, there is! It’s called ESV CrossRef (or just CrossRef, once it’s installed on your site).

How it works

ESV CrossRef scans your site for Old and New Testament Bible references. Once it finds a Bible reference on the page, it converts the reference(s) into a hover-able link. Each time a converted link is hovered over, a small pop up will appear containing the scripture reference.

As Sherri and I were chatting on the phone, I searched for this plugin, installed it, activated it, and we immediately evaluated the results. We were pleased with how it “grabbed” verses from her most recent blog post as well as from EVERY post and page that included scripture references.

How it looks

Read Sherri’s post, “The Great Exchange” to see the plugin in action. Here’s a visual example of what the pop-up verse reference looks like in Sherri’s post:

If you include Bible references on your website or blog, this plugin is a huge time saver. Instead of manually linking to the passage on a Bible website or typing in the verses by hand, the plugin does the heavy lifting for you. You can also customize the color, size, and font of your links.

Since the plugin is called “ESV,” I’m making an educated guess that it displays verses from the English Standard Version of the Bible. The ESV is a revision of the 1971 edition of the Revised Standard Version.

If you’re comfortable with that translation, give the plugin a whirl.

Click this image to download your free checklist that includes EVERYTHING you need to do prior to publishing a blog post! Or simply text PREPUB to 44222!

Click this image to download your free checklist that includes EVERYTHING you need to do prior to publishing a blog post! Or simply text PREPUB to 44222!

Tweet It!

Here are a couple of ready-made tweets so you can share what you just learned:

[Tweet “Discovered an amazing WordPress plugin that displays Bible references as popups “]

[Tweet “Display Bible verse refs as pop-ups with this cool WordPress plugin”]

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4 responses to “Awesome Plugin Displays Bible References as Pop-Ups”

  1. Katherine Jones says:

    So cool! Am forwarding this to several blogging friends who may benefit from this helpful feature. Thanks!

  2. Sherri Sand says:

    And Laura is a genius! My beautiful web site is because of her and her fantastic team!

  3. Carrie Dameron says:

    Laura, This sounds amazing, BUT, when I clicked on the link to install the plugin I received a warning that it is over 2 years old. :(…Can you check into it?

  4. You’re right, Carrie. The plugin is showing that it hasn’t been tested with the latest version of WordPress. But you could still try installing it and seeing how it works. If it doesn’t do the trick, simply deactivate the plugin and then uninstall it. (I just looked at the plugin in action on a client’s site — she has the latest version of WP installed, and the plugin is working perfectly.)

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