Author Spotlight (Widget)

FAQ

What if I don’t set any value in the widget settings?

If you don’t set any values then the widget displays the profile with some default text and values. The default widget title is ‘Author Spotlight’, other label defaults are ‘More posts by the Author �’ and ‘Read Full’. The number of characters displayed in author profile is limited to 1000 characters by default. Social URLs are turned off by default.

Does the widget only work with Single pages?

Beginning 3.0 version this plugin works with any Page, including the Single (or Post) page. Till the time this widget can detect an author, it can display the profile.

I don’t like my avatar image, can I upload my own photo?

If you wish to display a custom photograph to go with the Author’s Profile you may install the User Photo. In absence of this plugin the ‘Author Spotlight” widget will fallback to displaying the gravatar associated with the user.

The widget doesn’t display my website OR my profile details are incomplete!

The widget picks details from User’s WordPress profile. Needless to say that if this information is not there the widget cannot display it. To set your own user-profile details go to Users > Your Profile. If you are an admin of the blog the you may also edit the profile of other users and add their profile image if the User Photo plugin is installed.

The link to the author profile page doesn’t work for me!

For the link to the full profile page of the author to work you would need to ensure that your wordpress theme contains the author.php. Refer this codex page for details on the author templates.

My blog posts are written by multiple authors, how can I display all profiles on the post page?

Beginning 2.0 version this plugin supports the excellent Co-Authors Plus plugin, if you have this plugin installed all author profiles would show up on the Single page without any extra configuration. This plugin lets you add multiple authors to a post. Remember that our plugin works even without the Co-Authors Plus plugin.

The plugin configuration screen shows many social icons, but where do the Authors add these URLs? The Author profile page of WordPress only allows adding Website, AIM, Yahoo IM & Jabber / Google Talk.

In order to add the facility to add additional contact methods or social URLs you need to copy-paste the code provided in the Installation section in your Theme functions file. Once added, you will these additional fields in the User profile page.

I was using the 2.x version of the plugin and the Widget stopped working after upgrading to 3.x. What’s wrong?

If you upgraded the plugin from 2.x to 3.x version then you will have to add the Sidebar Widget again and reconfigure it since due to the plugin rewrite to the new WordPress API the old settings are no longer used. If you are using any caching plugin (example SuperCache) then don’t forget to refresh your cache.

I don’t want to add or display the Social icons for the widget. How do I turn it off?

Adding Social icons is optional and by default its turned off. Just ensure that on the Widget Admin screen all check-boxes against these icons are un-checked. The icons wouldn’t show up on your blog/website.

My Author Profiles don’t at all look like the ones you display in the screenshots

That’s because your theme style must be altered accordingly. Please find below a suggested CSS (feel free to customize to your needs):

/* Author Spotlight style begins */
#author-spotlight {
    background: #f2f7fc;
    border-top: 4px solid #000;
    clear: both;
    font-size: 13px;
    line-height: 15px;
    overflow: hidden;
    padding: 10px;
}
#author-spotlight #author-avatar {
    background: #fff;
    border: 1px solid #e7e7e7;
    float: left;
    align:left;
    padding: 5px;
}
#author-spotlight #author-profile{
    float: left;
}
#author-spotlight #author-description{
    margin-top:5px; 
}
#author-spotlight #author-link{
    margin-top:5px; 
    float:right;            
}
#author-spotlight #social-icons{
    padding-bottom:16px; 
    margin-top:2px;
    padding-top:0px;
    align:center;
    background:#DFF3F9;
}
#author-spotlight #social-icons img{
    margin:0px;
    border:none;
    background:none;
}
#author-spotlight h2 {
    color: #000;
    font-size: 100%;
    font-weight: bold;
    margin-bottom: 0;
}
#author-spotlight img {
    align:left;
    float:left;
    padding:5px;
    margin:5px 10px 0.5px 0px;
    background: #fff;
    border: 1px solid #e7e7e7;
}
/* Author Spotlight style ends */