Title: Hugh
Author: George Stephanis
Published: <strong>February 5, 2016</strong>
Last modified: June 10, 2026

---

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# Hugh

 By [George Stephanis](https://profiles.wordpress.org/georgestephanis/)

[Download](https://downloads.wordpress.org/plugin/hugh.1.0.4.zip)

 * [Details](https://wordpress.org/plugins/hugh/#description)
 * [Reviews](https://wordpress.org/plugins/hugh/#reviews)
 *  [Installation](https://wordpress.org/plugins/hugh/#installation)
 * [Development](https://wordpress.org/plugins/hugh/#developers)

 [Support](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/hugh/)

## Description

Hugh is a social color experiment for WordPress. Add the Hugh widget to any sidebar
and visitors to your site can pick a color — background, text, the whole page — 
and broadcast it to everyone else viewing the site at the same time.

**How it works:**

 1. A visitor opens the color picker in the Hugh widget, chooses a hex color, and optionally
    leaves a short note.
 2. Hugh pushes that color via the REST API and stores it (up to 100 recent entries).
 3. The page background and text color transition smoothly to the new color for all
    active visitors.
 4. A row of color swatches shows the history of recent choices — click any swatch 
    to jump back to that color.

It’s part toy, part social experiment: can your visitors agree on a color, or will
it descend into a color battle?

**Technical details:**

 * Colors are stored via the WP object cache when an external cache (Memcached, 
   Redis) is available, making it fast and ephemeral. Without an external cache 
   it falls back to a WP option for persistence.
 * Color history is capped at 100 entries, sorted by timestamp.
 * REST endpoints at `hugh/v1/colors` (GET) and `hugh/v1/colors/add` (POST) are 
   public and unauthenticated by design — this is intentional for the live-sharing
   mechanic.
 * The `hugh_css` filter lets themes register custom CSS overrides. Twenty Seventeen
   support is built in; other themes can hook in via `add_filter( 'hugh_css', ...)`.
 * Colors are rendered as smooth CSS transitions so the page doesn’t flash when 
   a new color arrives.

**Note:** Hugh works best on sites with an external object cache. Without one, colors
are persisted to the database and shared state may lag under concurrent visitors.

## Installation

 1. Upload the `hugh` folder to `/wp-content/plugins/` or install directly through 
    the WordPress plugin screen.
 2. Activate the plugin through the **Plugins** screen in wp-admin.
 3. Go to **Appearance  Widgets** and drag the **Hugh Widget** into any sidebar.
 4. Visit the front end and try it out.

## FAQ

### Will this slow down my site?

On sites with an external object cache (Redis, Memcached) Hugh is very fast — color
reads and writes go straight to cache. On sites without one, each color submission
writes to the database, which may not suit high-traffic sites.

### Can I control which themes Hugh styles?

Hugh applies a full-page background and text color change by default, with additional
theme-specific rules for Twenty Seventeen. Other themes can add their own overrides
by hooking into the `hugh_css` filter.

### Can visitors submit any color they want?

Hugh validates that submitted colors are valid 6-digit hex values (`#rrggbb`) before
storing them. Labels are sanitized and capped at 255 characters.

### How many colors does Hugh remember?

Up to 100 recent colors are stored. Older entries are dropped automatically when
the cap is reached.

### Is the REST API endpoint protected?

The `hugh/v1/colors/add` endpoint is intentionally public so any visitor can submit
a color without logging in — that’s the whole point. If you want to lock it down
you can remove or replace the `permission_callback` via a custom plugin or mu-plugin.

## Reviews

There are no reviews for this plugin.

## Contributors & Developers

“Hugh” is open source software. The following people have contributed to this plugin.

Contributors

 *   [ George Stephanis ](https://profiles.wordpress.org/georgestephanis/)
 *   [ Michael Arestad ](https://profiles.wordpress.org/michael-arestad/)

[Translate “Hugh” into your language.](https://translate.wordpress.org/projects/wp-plugins/hugh)

### Interested in development?

[Browse the code](https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/browser/hugh/), check out the
[SVN repository](https://plugins.svn.wordpress.org/hugh/), or subscribe to the [development log](https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/log/hugh/)
by [RSS](https://plugins.trac.wordpress.org/log/hugh/?limit=100&mode=stop_on_copy&format=rss).

## Changelog

#### 1.0.4

 * Tested up to WordPress 7.0.

#### 1.0.3

 * Add `limit` parameter support to the `colors` REST endpoint.

#### 1.0.2

 * Add theme-specific CSS support for Twenty Seventeen.

#### 1.0.1

 * Minor tidying. Updated button text, added missing i18n function calls.

#### 1.0

 * Initial release.

## Meta

 *  Version **1.0.4**
 *  Last updated **2 days ago**
 *  Active installations **Fewer than 10**
 *  WordPress version ** 4.4 or higher **
 *  Tested up to **7.0**
 *  PHP version ** 7.4 or higher **
 * Tags
 * [colors](https://wordpress.org/plugins/tags/colors/)[fun](https://wordpress.org/plugins/tags/fun/)
   [interactive](https://wordpress.org/plugins/tags/interactive/)[social](https://wordpress.org/plugins/tags/social/)
   [widget](https://wordpress.org/plugins/tags/widget/)
 *  [Advanced View](https://wordpress.org/plugins/hugh/advanced/)

## Ratings

No reviews have been submitted yet.

[Your review](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/hugh/reviews/#new-post)

[See all reviews](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/hugh/reviews/)

## Contributors

 *   [ George Stephanis ](https://profiles.wordpress.org/georgestephanis/)
 *   [ Michael Arestad ](https://profiles.wordpress.org/michael-arestad/)

## Support

Got something to say? Need help?

 [View support forum](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/hugh/)