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!
Sam – the widget’s not working at all now. Maybe you should put a note up to let people know.
@Tim: It was discussed in the comments, but I added some notes in the post.
Since the update of wordpress to version 2.9, plugin abou me widget no longer works. Will there a correction to make it compatible? Thank you! Best regards
Hi I have your widget installed on my coprophagia website using 2.9. It stopped working, is this because of the recent upgrade?
@dogpoopguy; Yes, apparently 2.9 breaks the editor for the widget…
Moving discussion to the forum topic
Closing comments here, there are so many it’s no longer practical!