Since I don’t consider my blog anonymous or ‘seekrit’ I grabbed a text widget and started adding an “About Me’ to my sidebar. After trying to get things aligned, formatted, and adding a few links I started thinking a widget might be nice for this. I had not seen anything like this around, so here it is, my first widget.
“*Fixed in 0.96: Align didn’t work in some themes.”
Here are some installation instructions:
- Click the download link below to get the latest version
- Drop the AboutMe folder into your wp-content/plugins folder
- Go to your Administration:Plugins page and activate the About Me Widget
To configure:
- Go to Presentation:Widgets
- Move (drag and drop) the widget to where you would like it in your active sidebar
- Click on the config button for the About Me widget (little notepad icon thingy on the right)
- Enter the title you want visitors to see on the sidebar
- Click in the editor window and start designing your own widget!!!
Put together a generic ‘about me’ design:
- Select the image icon above the editor (looks like a tree)
- Enter the URL (path) to the image (relative is fine, e.g.; /wp-content/uploads/portrait.jpg)
- Enter Image Description, Title
- Select the appearance tab and use the pull-down menu to apply an alignment class
- Click the Update button
- Back in the editor now, type some text (a blurb about yourself or your site)
- Hi-lite the text and use the pull-down styles menu to apply alignment class/style
- Add some links, if you wish, then repeat #7 to the link/anchor text
- Close the config window when you’re finished and hit the Save Changes button
This widget is working in current versions of WordPress (2.8+). Please note link to the WP Plugin Directory below…
Here is a current working version: About Me Widget Thanks to John BouAntoun!
*Fixed in v0.91: Cannot select left or right alignment. *Added: Configurable titles for image and links. Thanks Steen.
*Fixed in v0.92: Image ‘alt’ and ‘title’ attributes working now.
*Changed in v0.93: “blurb” respects newlines. Thanks Andy Skelton.
*Fixed in 0.94: Overlapping text issue with default admin theme. Thanks Aaron Brazell. *Added: Configurable font color.
*Added in 0.95: Function getimagesize() added to maintain xhtml validity and page speed.
*Fixed in 0.96: Align didn’t work in some themes. Thanks JR Rozko.
*Fixed in 0.97: Took out the clear that was breaking some themes/sidebars.
*Fixed in 0.98: A solution for people on Dreamhost (and others with hosts using safe_mode/curl). This solution does not use a curl wrapper, but falls back to a relative path. It will require the user to place the image in /wp-content/uploads/. Thanks to Martin Cleaver who generously gave me a temp site at Dreamhost for testing!
*Re-design for 1.0beta: Uses WordPress’ built-in TinyMCE editor for layout/design, produces valid XHTML 1.0 Strict (though this can be broken ;’), designed and tested in WordPress 2.2.1.
*Fixed in 1.01: Bad path to the Image plugin (gave a 404-Not Found), dialed in lineheight – 09/02/07
*Fixed in 1.02: If auto-installed from wordpress.org, TinyMCE would have no buttons (plugin directory name no longer hard-coded). Thanks to guybrush – 09/14/07
-1.03: Sync’ing with http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/about-me-widget/
-1.04: ditto above
Previous non-TinyMCE version (stable): About Me Widget v0.98
As of 11/16/07 there have been over 14,300 downloads of the About Me Widget. wow.
Feedback appreciated!
I was wondering if this plugin worked with the default kubrick theme and if so, how do i get it to work properly. thanks in advance.
Hi Ian: Neither the ‘default’ (Kubrick) or ‘classic’ themes that come with WordPress have widget support, so they won’t work with my widget…
Thank you for the response, i appreciate the quick reply.
hey sam – thanks heaps for the widget – it’s looking great and working great…except for IE – for some reason when i open my page in IE version 6 the picture doesn’t show up – it looks super nice in firefox though!
any thoughts?
Barbara: Hope you got my email.
Seems like you might have a host with safe_mode on, so the plugin can’t get the image dimensions (and IE isn’t handling that gracefully).
NOTE: Fixed in 0.98, download from link above…
Hello, I had been using your widget v. 0.97 for a couple months when I encountered a problem then I read all these comments and tried v.0.98 alpha but I’m still having the same problem.
I have configured the widget with alignment “center” and it loads the appropriate imgalign styling “display:block;margin:5px auto 0 auto;”.
I now want to change the alignment so I had changed line 52 to look like this:
elseif ($alignall == “center”) {$imgalign = ‘border:1px solid #000;display:block;margin:5px -5px 0 -5px;’;}
My browser didn’t seem to be picking up the change for a long time no matter my clearing cookies, cache, ctrl+F5, etc. After about an hour or two it started to load this change.
I then changed the margin again but it took hours. I tried clearing browser cache, tried different browser engine, different browser altogether. and finally different computer. It is obvious that it’s not browser.
Where is wordpress/about-me keeping this style? cache? I searched everythign, found no cache on my web account. I even disabled cache in wp-config.php. still nothing.
where oh where is aboutme grabbing this old margin setting from?
right now i have line 52 looking this way
elseif ($alignall == “center”) {$imgalign = ‘border:1px solid #000;display:block;margin:5px auto 0 auto;’;}
but aboutme still just using
display:block;margin:5px auto 0 auto;
-Tania
Hi Tania, those settings are stored in the database under wp_options.
The line you’re changing is part of the function
widget_aboutme_control()which is only run when you open the widget’s config panel/window and then do a save.If you edit that line in the file and save the file back to the server the change won’t be recognized (because it’s part of the config interface ‘operation’). If you want immediate results, edit the last `echo` lines near the end of the file. That is the function
widget_aboutmethat is executed each time the page loads.Hope that helps.
Sam thanks for replying so quickly. I suspected the database and searched wp_options last night but didnt’ find anything.. I must have overlooked it.
Anyway, I think i’ll just update the lines at the bottom like you said.
btw, your plugin is great.
if you don’t mind, what plugin / addon is it that creates the instant preview as I’m typing?
thanks!
-Tania
You’re welcome Tania. Sorry it was so frustrating ;’)
In wp_options it is called:
widget_aboutmeAnd the plugin is Live Comment Preview…
Good luck!
Sam, Thanks for the info..
I wish I could say mystery solved, but I’m still seeing something odd and I hope you can shed some light. In aboutme.php I changed “auto” in the margin property to a number, and moved it to the “‘;
WordPress was still pulling the old info from the wp-options table even after changing the orientation in the widget options from center to left and back. So I deleted that line from the table, and then readded my info into the widget options, saved it, but again, wordpress is pulling “margin: 5px auto 0 auto” from somewhere.
I checked the record from the wp-options table and again, it was there. I don’t know where the widget is getting this setting from. I’ve grep’d the aboutme.php file and it does not say “auto” in any of the margin properties.
In fact, $imgalign is not even in the “” line anymore as you can see in my copy&paste above.
So this must be somewhere else in the database? where?
woops… my code got stripped. I meant to say I moved “margin: …” to line 104
... img style="display: block;border: 1px solid #000; margin: 2px -5px 0 -5px;text-align:center;" src="'.$imguri.'" alt="'.$imgtitle.'" title="'.$imgtitle.'" />';
...
I did that once! Had 2 different versions of the same plugin, doing tests in both, had a brain fart and left them both on at some point…
Glad you got a handle on it.
Sam, I just figured out what I was doing wrong this time. So nevermind my last 2 posts. Let’s just say when you have two installs of the same plugin, make sure you’r editing the right one. lol!
Sam,
I upgraded to a different template and I am now using your widget. I think it’s great but I am having the same problem as Barbara did. Any help you give me would be great.
Ian, can you verify you are using version 0.98 please?
Yes Sam I am using the newest version 0.98. I had redownloaded it yesterday.
Ian: You’re using a link to an image on a remote server (photobucket). Although you can do this with some hosts, it won’t work with safe_mode on. You need to copy that image to
/wp-content/uploads/.Not sure what you mean by safe mode. I did move the picture to wpcontent/uploads/
Hmmm, nice widget, but not having the ability to control the style (ie text size) without editing the php file is not optimal. It would be nice if those were options added to the edittable widget options.
Mr Papa
Mr Papa: Actually this was always a concern, but the ‘real estate’ (size) of the config screen was limited. Not just limited by size, but IMO limited by how ‘complicated’ it could get.
I considered adding a class to the About Me elements and including a css file, but I really hoped to keep this plugin down to one file.
Next version, I plan to re-think this and get in some more configurable options (configurable without editing the aboutme.php file)…
Thanks for the feedback!
Hi Sam,
Thanks for a great widget, I’m enjoying it in firefox. However, like Barbara I’m unable to see my picture in IE. Could you forward me the email that you sent to her?
I tried looking for v0.99 (which you said contained the fix) but I can’t – could you help?
Cheers 🙂
Elizabeth:
As we discussed via email, you’ve raised concerns that the 0.98 fix isn’t working. I hope to get more feedback so I can get this straightened out for 0.99.
Note: The reference to 0.99 was a typo on my part.
Hi,
I would really like to use your widget, but although my theme has been changed to work with widgets, I don’t get a config button for the “About Me” widget. Is there anything I can do?
Stephantasy: Only time I have seen that before is when the Sidebar Widgets plugin isn’t installed right (or it’s a really old version).
Any other widgets working?
Yes, the other widgets seem to be working fine. I’m using the “Now Reading” widget and the Irrepressible widget from Amnesty International, also the normal ones (search, categories and archive etc).
However, it is very possible that I did something wrong somewhere, I have no clue about php. And I needed to insert some kind of code to make my theme widget ready… Would switching themes help? Though I really, really like my current theme. *sigh*
Well, switching themes might verify where the problem is. But if other widgets are working and you can click on the the little notepad-looking icon to open and configure them, then it sure sounds like the About Me widget got screwed up somewhere, perhaps in the download/upload?
BTW, the code for that little icon and the opening of the config panel is separate from my widget code, which is why I was thinking in that direction…
I deleted the widget and installed it again. Now it works! Sorry that I bothered you. And it’s a really great tool!
Not to worry Stephan, Glad to hear you got it working…
Hi, great widget!
however, i’m posting an image and it’s appearing as a small dot. not sure why it’s shrinking the picture down so much. it seems like it’s not getting the dimensions from the file and showing up as 1 X 1. Any fix?
Thanks, MLG
Matt: The most immediate solution is to edit the aboutme.php file, line 120:
echo '<ul><li><img style="'.$imgalign.'" src="'.$imguri.'" alt="'.$imgtitle.'" title="'.$imgtitle.'" width="'.$imgw.'px" height="'.$imgh.'px" /></li>';Note the
width="'.$imgw.'px"andheight="'.$imgh.'px"… Find out your image dimensions and enter them so that the above line shows width= and height= like this:width="123px" height="136px"Make sure you change the 123 and 136 to your dimensions ;’)
Keep an eye on the next release, I’m hoping to change, well, pretty much everything. More info at About Me widget for WordPress – update
Sam, great work!
Tahnk you very much for useful widget!
Please help me. I have done everything that is asked. Activated the widget, created the upload folder in the correct directory, changed the lines of code:
$newoptions = array(
‘title’=>’About Me’,
‘imguri’=>’http://www.blog4brains.com/wp-content/uploads/cerebral.png’,
‘imgw’ => ‘111’,
‘imgh’ => ‘125’,
I still get nothing. Please help as I would love to utilize this great plugin.
Opps… I forgot to tell you my problem. No image in side bar. It is acting is if the url for the image is incorrect.
If you want to manually edit the options, do so at the bottom of the script (lines 120~123).
The area you edited is only ‘used’ the very first time the widget is initialized/installed.
Did you not have any success setting the options from Presentation:Sidebar Widgets in your admin pages?
omg, I cannot believe I was missing out on all of that. I did not even know you could go to the widgets link under presentation and edit it there. I thought you had to go into the file itself. Wow, that is nice to be able to edit like that. Anyways, thanks for the quick reply you are a great developer!
Justin
Hi Sam,
I just wanted to say thank you for that great plugin! Works fantastic and it’s a great way to connect with visitors!
I love the widget. Thanks!
sam, this looks like a great widget and i’m looking forward to using it. However, upon configuring, I get the error:
“Warning: getimagesize(): Read error! blog/wp-content/plugins/widgets/aboutme.php on line 44”
any suggestions?
Jeffrey: This comment has a work-around
I just wanted to report that I am having the same problem as Barbara and Elizabeth with .98 not showing images on IE, but displaying them fine on Firefox.
Other than that, I am stoked about this plugin! It works great!
i’m confused… .98 does not seem to fix the Dreamhost avatar “getimage” issue. help!