How-To: Make a post fade to black

Well if you can’t do it yourself, I’d suggest hiring a programmer. Explain to them the business requirements and functionality needed and let them figure out the best way of making it happen.

Yes. But should I have them make a Plug-in or a theme?

Which was really my only question.

Perhaps this will help:

What I want:
I want each post to log the user’s IP or computer name or some unique identifier. After logging that identity a timer would start and once that timer completed, the individual post would black out. Either by changing the background to black, or by drawing a black box over the content.

I would then like text to be displayed in white that says when the user first accessed the post, how long they viewed it, and a timestamp when it blacked out.

Limitations:
I can not code, and php, html is useless for the most part to me unless it is cut and paste.

Question:
Should this be created as a Plugin?
Should this be created as a part of a theme?
Which would be cheaper to have a programmer create?

I would suggest a plugin approach as it seperates functionality from presentation and content. Also if something goes bad you can just disable it without “turning off” your theme. And if the plugin is done well, you can use it regardless the theme or WordPress version.

Good advice. Thank you!