Author Spotlight (Widget) Plugin

Author Spotlight widget displays the profile of the author(s) with Social links (example: Twitter, Facebook) and his/her profile picture or Gravatar on any post or page that has an Author. The widget automatically detects the current author(s) of the displayed post or page; just drag and drop the widget on your sidebar and you are done.

To display a custom photograph with the Author’s Profile you may install the User Photo. In absence of this plugin the widget will fall-back to displaying the Gravatar associated with the user. If your posts have multiple authors you may use the Co-Authors Plus, the Author Spotlight will then display all the author profiles one below another for such post/page.

Note that installing the User Photo or Co-Author plugin is purely optional, this widget will work fine without them as well.

If you face any issues with the plugin or have any suggestion/feature requests please do so at the support forum.

1. Download and unzip author-profile.zip. Then upload the folder containing author-profile.php to the /wp-content/plugins/ directory.
2. Alternatively, you may use the Automatic installation feature of WordPress.
3. Activate the plugin through the Plugins menu in WordPress. For details refer this Codex page.
4. To display Author Spotlight, browse to Appearance > Widgets and drag-and-drop the ‘Author Spotlight” widget to desired sidebar. You may configure the widget according to your needs. Save your changes and you are done.
5. To enable the default look & feel of your widget you may copy/paste the suggested CSS at the end of your theme CSS file (usually style.css). Please refer the answer to the FAQ section for the CSS code.

6. To add the ability to add Social URLs in the User profile, please add the following add to your Theme functions file:

   /Add Social URLs/
   function author_spotlight_contactmethods( $contactmethods ) {
   if ( !isset( $contactmethods[‘twitter’] ) )
   $contactmethods[‘twitter’] = ‘Twitter’;
   if ( !isset( $contactmethods[‘facebook’] ) )
   $contactmethods[‘facebook’] = ‘Facebook’;
   if ( !isset( $contactmethods[‘linkedin’] ) )
   $contactmethods[‘linkedin’] = ‘LinkedIn’;
   if ( !isset( $contactmethods[‘flickr’] ) )
   $contactmethods[‘flickr’] = ‘Flickr’;
   if ( !isset( $contactmethods[‘myspace’] ) )
   $contactmethods[‘myspace’] = ‘MySpace’;
   if ( !isset( $contactmethods[‘friendfeed’] ) )
   $contactmethods[‘friendfeed’] = ‘Friendfeed’;
   if ( !isset( $contactmethods[‘delicious’] ) )
   $contactmethods[‘delicious’] = ‘Delicious’;
   if ( !isset( $contactmethods[‘digg’] ) )
   $contactmethods[‘digg’] = ‘Digg’;
   if ( !isset( $contactmethods[‘feed’] ) )
   $contactmethods[‘feed’] = ‘XML Feed’;
   if ( !isset( $contactmethods[‘tumblr’] ) )
   $contactmethods[‘tumblr’] = ‘Tumblr’;
   if ( !isset( $contactmethods[‘youtube’] ) )
   $contactmethods[‘youtube’] = ‘YouTube’;
   if ( !isset( $contactmethods[‘blogger’] ) )
   $contactmethods[‘blogger’] = ‘Blogger’;
   if ( !isset( $contactmethods[‘googleplus’] ) )
   $contactmethods[‘googleplus’] = ‘Google+’;
   if ( !isset( $contactmethods[‘instagram’] ) )
   $contactmethods[‘instagram’] = ‘Instagram’;
   if ( !isset( $contactmethods[‘slideshare’] ) )
   $contactmethods[‘slideshare’] = ‘Slideshare’;
   if ( !isset( $contactmethods[‘stackoverflow’] ) )
   $contactmethods[‘stackoverflow’] = ‘Stackoverflow’;
   if ( !isset( $contactmethods[‘posterous’] ) )
   $contactmethods[‘posterous’] = ‘Posterous’;

   return $contactmethods; 

   }

   add_filter(‘user_contactmethods’,’author_spotlight_contactmethods’);

1. 

   Widget configuration screen.

2. 

   Multiple author profiles (co-authors) displayed on the sidebar.

3. 

   This is how the widget looks like on the single-page sidebar after configuration.

3.4

• Fixed Readme file, as WordPress plugin page was not displaying the FAQs correctly. Minor code clean-up.

3.3

Code clean-up.

3.2

• Fixed issues with description text inadvertently showing up as hyper-link for some icons.
• Added support for 6 more social sites (Google+, Posterous, Stackoverflow, Slideshare, Instagram and Blogger). Do remember to update the author_spotlight_contactmethods function in your theme functions file to be able to add these URLs to the author profiles (refer the installation instructions).

3.1

Fixed issues with image path. Some other minor fixes.

3.0

• Rewritten to the new Widget API. Now works with any page (not just “Single”). Added feature to display Social icons (optional). Provided example CSS.

2.1

• Bug fix to correct a method call.

2.0

• Added support for the “Co-Authors Plus” plugin to display multiple author profiles for co-authored posts.

1.2

• Minor change: Fallback to show Website URL label only when URL is present.

1.1

• Bug-fix to ensure proper fall-back if the User-photo plugin doesn’t exist. Added plugin URL.

1.0

• Initial public release.