About Me widget for WordPress

Posted on June 28, 2006 by Sam Devol , Last modified: 3:01 pm

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:

1. Click the download link below to get the latest version
2. Drop the AboutMe folder into your wp-content/plugins folder
3. Go to your Administration:Plugins page and activate the About Me Widget

To configure:

1. Go to Presentation:Widgets
2. Move (drag and drop) the widget to where you would like it in your active sidebar
3. Click on the config button for the About Me widget (little notepad icon thingy on the right)
4. Enter the title you want visitors to see on the sidebar
5. Click in the editor window and start designing your own widget!!!

Put together a generic ‘about me’ design:

1. Select the image icon above the editor (looks like a tree)
2. Enter the URL (path) to the image (relative is fine, e.g.; /wp-content/uploads/portrait.jpg)
3. Enter Image Description, Title
4. Select the appearance tab and use the pull-down menu to apply an alignment class
5. Click the Update button
6. Back in the editor now, type some text (a blurb about yourself or your site)
7. Hi-lite the text and use the pull-down styles menu to apply alignment class/style
8. Add some links, if you wish, then repeat #7 to the link/anchor text
9. 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!

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Tagged with: plugin, sidebar, widgets, WordPress
Posted in Computers, Things, widgets, WordPress

158 comments on “About Me widget for WordPress”

1. Steen says:

   June 29, 2006 at 11:52 am

   Hi, nice widget! However, a few bugs:
   * The text-algnment automatically changes to ‘center’ no matter what I type
   * The image has a fixed title ‘Sam portrait’
   * Perhaps ‘Work background’ isn’t the best choice for all people, perhaps simply ‘More’ would be better

   I know I can hack the aboutme.php, but I’d just let you know.
   Anyway, I like the widget, and had in fact been searching for one the last few days. Great timing 🙂

2. Sam says:

   June 29, 2006 at 6:54 pm

   Steen: Thanks! I took a look at the text-alignment, found the bug and realized it was hiding another ;') 2 bugs for one! ok, taking my pill now…. The 'fixed' or hard-coded titles issues is a great point, I need to Add that to the config section so the user can name them. This is something I will address in the morning (and a lot easier then sniffing out image dimensions ;') EDIT: Fixed text-alignment issue and added image and link title configuration in v0.9.

3. Andy Skelton says:

   July 3, 2006 at 12:43 pm

   Hi Sam,
   This widget looks like a good idea to me! There is something out of balance in the interface though. Most of the widget audience might not know enough HTML to do a <br /> after every line. I’d suggest converting line breaks. You can use the wpautop function or roll your own.
   Cheers!

4. Lautreamont says:

   July 4, 2006 at 10:19 am

    In Response to: "[…] It’s important that you identify yourself to your visitors. The About Me widget from Sam Devol helps you to identify yourself in style. No HTML knowledge required! […]":  Nice plugin. Yet I don't feel there's a need to identify. It depends on the blog philosophy. IMHO

5. Aaron Brazell says:

   July 6, 2006 at 5:47 pm

   Appears to be broken in Firefox 1.5. Text is overlapping the fields making it impossible to know what to type and where.

6. Sam says:

   July 7, 2006 at 5:44 am

   Aaron: It’s not Firefox, it’s ME (actually it was my ‘style’)!

   Anyway, fixed in .94 ;’) Thanks Aaron.

7. Keiran says:

   July 7, 2006 at 10:04 am

   I had the same problem as Aaron, then downloaded the .94 version. A lot better – the text doesn’t overlap the fields anymore. However, all the text is too far left, so it doesn’t all show on the screen now.

   Thanks for this plugin!

8. Sam says:

   July 7, 2006 at 12:14 pm

   Keiran: Fixed without version change. Let me know if you see any problems… Thanks!

9. JR Rozko says:

   July 20, 2006 at 9:15 pm

   Just wondering if there is a way to align the image to the right or center.

   Thanks

10. Sam says:

    July 21, 2006 at 5:31 am

    JR: Alignment works with most themes, but let me make a change so that it will work with any theme. Check back today for v0.96…
    EDIT: Ok, posted 0.96, should be ok now.

11. JR Rozko says:

    July 22, 2006 at 3:21 am

    awesome – thanks!

12. xinfo says:

    August 3, 2006 at 4:07 am

    Great plugin just waiting to use this

13. Greekstories says:

    August 8, 2006 at 4:33 pm

    Hi,
    I downloaded and installed the Aboutme Widget. I put in it in the folder plugins/widgets.
    Then I chose a widget-enabled template and tried to configure the whole. BUT there is no configuration button for the Aboutme widget. What is wrong?

14. Sam says:

    August 8, 2006 at 5:50 pm

    Your current theme “Head” doesn’t support widgets.

15. Serge Norguard says:

    August 8, 2006 at 10:32 pm

    Hey there Sam,

    Thanks for the tip on editting the font size settings on your widget.

16. Sam says:

    August 9, 2006 at 4:53 am

    Welcome Serge, glad it worked for you…

17. Greekstories says:

    August 9, 2006 at 9:43 am

    Hi again,
    I know that my current theme does not support widgets. I tries your widget with another theme that supports widgets and it doesn’t work for me the problem being what I mentioned in my previous port. Any clues?

18. Donald Woulard III says:

    August 11, 2006 at 4:03 pm

    Where do I get a widget enable template?

19. Sam says:

    August 11, 2006 at 4:14 pm

    You can find some widget enabled themes here: The theme viewer.

20. unreliable narrator says:

    August 18, 2006 at 1:55 am

    “To configure: 1. Go to Admin Presentation:Sidebar Widgets and click on the config button.”

    Okay, new weird issue: I placed the php in my plugins folder and activated it in Admin: Plugins–but I still don’t see a “config button” or in fact *anything* under the Presentation tab–? Do I need to add a line of code into the Sidebar php file, and then change my css as well? Help! And thanks for a cool-looking bit o’ code. :o)

21. unreliable narrator says:

    August 18, 2006 at 2:11 am

    Oh wait… forgot to install widget stuff from WP. Neeeever miiiiiind. must be late here! ;oP

22. J. Pisano says:

    August 26, 2006 at 12:43 am

    Sam,

    I love your “About me” widget. It may be the single best about me widget I have come across for WordPress, especially in its’ simplicity.

    Quick Question regarding Opera and the widget; I opened up my blog in the Opera Browser, for the first time, and saw that Opera splits the “about me widget” for some reason right after the photo and caused my whole sidebar to drop down to the end of the page. I can’t seem to see anything that would cause that, but I am not a great coder. If you have Opera, and wouldn’t mind, would you check it out and let me know if you think it’s the widget or my own web site problem.

    Thanks,

    Joe

23. Sam says:

    August 26, 2006 at 8:43 am

    Not sure why it’s whacky in your theme, but this fixes it:

    Open aboutme.php in a text editor and go to line 105. It looks like this:
    echo '

24. I'll try some more testing when I get a chance, see if I can replicate this...