One of the items I needed for this new blog was a way for showing all of my social networking profiles. I tried several different plugins and was amazed at how difficult something so simple as this should be. I found after some experimenting on my development site a very easy way to do this. It is a relatively simple process.
I use Atahualpa as my theme. In Atahualpa it is possible to add new widget areas. I added a new widget area below my header image using the following code in the ”Configure Area Header” section of Atahualpa theme options:
<?php bfa_widget_area(‘name=below logo’); ?>
Next I added the Social Media Widget to my new widget area. Don’t fill in the widget title. Set it to align in the center. Add your URLs for the various profiles. I found this to work great as you can see by looking up at the row of social media icons below the header image. Once I got the right combination of new widget area and the right widget, this worked very well.
Note: I moved the widget area to the center column above the “loops.” It works better there visually.
Nice!
I am happy to see some newer themes, or reboots on classic themes, are making the ability to share those links a core part of the theme itself.
When I set up Dick Kaser (Executive Editor of Computers in Libraries) with a blog while he explores business travel with only an iPad I went with iTheme2 because it just plain works on all platforms. His blog is at @dickkaser’s & Etcetera… and if you look in the upper right, those social media links are done using the WordPress Core links functionality.
You just create a category for the SM links and use the Banners and Links widget in the theme to display links in that category. Something not everyone would like, but I prefer, is that you have to supply the images for the links – using any size you want. With a variety of icons for some of the social networks possible, I prefer selecting my own.
What do you mean by WordPress Core? What is the pulgin for Banners and Links? I can’t find it.
When I say WordPress Core I am referring to the parts of WordPress that exist independently of any theme or plugin. Whenever possible I stick to the Core so it is less work down the line when a theme changes or a plugin’s developer moves on to a new project and something he wrote stops being updated.
There is no Plugin for Banners and Links… that was kind of my point. It is a widget that is part of the iTheme2 theme from Themify.com. When the theme is active, the widget is available. Many themes include widgets designed for them as part of the theme install. Your own theme does the same thing – those widgets you see that start with BFA – like “BFA Popular Posts” – the BFA is short for BytesForAll, the developer of Atahualpa.
Making social networks part of the theme itself – independent of yet another plugin – is what I was so pleased to find in some newer themes.
Just what I was looking for. Thanks!