Plugin WordPress Follow Us: Social Networks on the Sidebar
During the completion phase of the new theme, like I had previously mentioned, I developed three plugin/widgets that enabled the management in a dynamic way of our blog’s sidebar. And, as promised, here’s the release of the first of the plugin/widgets.
Versione: 1.0
Pubblicato: 07 December 2009
Dimensione: 55.69 kB
Download: Plugin Follow us
Plugin Follow us
The plugin we’re talking about is very simple and permits adding – at a random point of your blog’s sidebar – a section dedicated to the various Social Networks to which you are subscribed.
As you might have noticed, Social Networks have become the tenet of web communication; it is crucial, for your blog’s success, to provide your followers with an opportunity to follow you through these new communication channels.
The Follow Us widget allows you to add links to the main Social Networks currently in use today; moreover, it also offers the possibility of adding a link to a potential newsletter page or to subscribe to the blog’s feed.
Installation
The installation, like for all WordPress plugins, is quite simple. After downloading the file, it can be executed following these simple steps:
- Unzip the archive named “follow-us” inside your folder “plugins” (/wp-content/plugins/).
- Activate the Plugin named Follow Us.
- From WordPress control panel click on the menu Appearance > Widgets.
- Drag the Widget named Follow Us on your blog’s sidebar to the point in which you want to display it.
- Configure the several options enabled by the plugin.
Widget Administration
By means of a small control panel, the widget allows you to choose which account, out of those available, to actually display on your blog’s sidebar.
At present, it is possible to choose between Facebook, Twitter and Delicious accounts, plus rss Feed subscription of the proper blog and links to a potential Newsletter page. For each item it is possible to add both the link and the text to link.
Below you can take a look at a screenshot with regard to the configuration of the widget’s control panel (click on the image to enlarge).
Widget in use
Obviously, a live preview of the widget in action can be seen just on the sidebar of our blog, anyway below, I am going to demonstrate you a screenshot of the Follow Us widget in action:
Personalization
The plugin provides the following css categories:
- .widget_follow-us {background image to place on the title}
- li.facebook {background image to display on Facebook account}
- li.facebook:hover {background image to display while moving the mouse on Facebook account}
- li.facebook span {color for the “Facebook” script}
- li.twitter {}
- li.twitter:hover { }
- li.twitter span { }
- li.rss { }
- li.rss:hover { }
- li.rss span { }
- li.newsletter { }
- li.newsletter:hover { }
- li.newsletter span { }
- li.delicious { }
- li.delicious:hover { }
- li.delicious span { }
The categories of every Social Network have the same functions described by the Facebook categories. It is possible to use personalized images which are going to be added inside the “images” folder of the plugin (/wp-content/plugins/follow-us/images/).
Internationalization
The widget has been localized in such a way as to allow the translation of all the texts presented to the user, it is released both in Italian and English.
Inside, you can also find the source files (language/follow-us.pot) in order to make it easy for everyone to generate dictionary files for the desired language.
Release Notes
Versione 1.0 (Initial version)
- Possibility to display the Facebook account with a relative link and text to link.
- Possibility to display the Twitter account with a relative link and text to link.
- Possibility to display the Delicious account with a relative link and text to link
- Possibility to display the subscription to rss Feed of the proper blog.
- Possibility to display the subscription to the Newsletter with link to the page and text to link.
- Italian language
- English language
For any type of clarification, suggestion, or criticism you are invited to use the comments of this article.
Versione: 1.0
Pubblicato: 07 December 2009
Dimensione: 55.69 kB
Download: Plugin Follow us
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11 comments
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Hi Nando,
I just tried to use this plugin at another site of mine (www.synaptici.com) and 2 things are not happening.
1 – when I check the box for Twitter and the one for Feed, when I click save, they become unchecked.
2 – the images are not displaying.
I will leave it at the site so you can have a peek. Its in the first sidebar at the bottom just under the share this widget.
I am running WP 2.9.1 and installed it under wp-content/plugins/follow-us
Thanks and cheers,
Gil
Hi Gil,
in your stylesheet “style.css” tries to comment on the background property in the following lines of code:
style.css (riga 932)
#sidebar_home ul li ul li {
background:url("images/icon.gif") no-repeat scroll left top #FFFFFF;
margin:0;
padding:0 0 5px 20px;
}
style.css (riga 926)
#sidebar_home ul li li {
background:url("images/icon.gif") no-repeat scroll left top #FFFFFF;
margin:0;
padding:0 0 5px 20px;
}
So the images should be seen.
The version 2.9 of wordpress has changed the function that checks the check in widget, I need to update the plugin I’m a bit ‘of time.
I’m having the same issues. The boxes do not remain checked and the icons do not appear in their places.
Hello Kyle, see the answer above that I gave to Gil.
Hi, do you have the one that it automatically slides down? Because this type of plugin eats too much space on my blog.
greate job boss.
Ciao Nando! Sono capitato per caso su questo sito attraverso il tuo plugin. Ma non riesco proprio a far visualizzare le icone? Come devo fare? Puoi darmi una spiegazione più dettagliata? …grazie e scusa il disturbo!
Please can you make me the gif images 300 x 86 wide not the 287x 86 that you have so it will fit my side bar area. for follow us, face book, twitter etc
Thank you
Thomas