Update On Version 2.0
As of version 2.0 this plugin will be moved over to my coding site at #! code, the full link is here:
Social Media Page Plugin at #! code
Comments are now closed on this post so I you want help and support then go over to #! code and either leave a comment or post in the forum.
The Social Media Page WordPress plugin will add a list of links to your social media profiles on a page or post of your choice. This plugin also creates a widget that will display your social media profiles in the side bar of your site.
Rather than getting you to enter all of your social media profiles as URLs the plugin gets you to enter your username, and works out the rest. Some exceptions (like Facebook) require some extra information, which has been accounted for. There are over 100 different social media sites to select from so it should cover anything you happen to be a member of.
When the links are displayed on the page it will use a keyword of your choice as the text for the link.
With this plugin you can create a central base for any social media strategy.
Download
Download the Social Media Page Plugin at WordPress.org.
Instillation
To install the plugin just drop the folder social-media-page into your WordPress plugins folder (located at wp-content/plugins/). Log into WordPress and go to your Plugins section and activate the social media page plugin.
When the plugin is activated for the first time it checks to see if a table exists called wp_socialmediaprofiles. If it doesn’t then it creates it and adds lots of social media sites that will be used by the plugin.
The plugin also creates a WordPress option called smp_keyword. This option is used to store the keyword that will be used to link to the profiles entered.
Administration
The administration section for this plugin is under Settings->Social Media Page.
Social media page administration section.
Enter your keyword in the input box at the top. You can now start filling in your social media profile usernames, following the template to the right of the input box on each line. Taking StumbleUpon as an example, the template is http://{username}.stumbleupon.com/, the username tag will be replaced by whatever you enter into the username field. My StumbleUpon username is philipnorton42, so I would put this into the username box.
Social media page - entering information.
There are some sites that do things differently, and one of these is Facebook. This site has two input boxes, one for your name and your profile ID, both of which can be found out from the URL on Facebook. Just to clarify, the name field in Facebook is your name, but with spaces replaced by “_”. So my own name being Philip Norton, would be written as Philip_Norton.
Only those profiles that you fill in will be displayed on the front end of the site.
If you see a star next to a profile then this means that you should enable public viewing on those profiles before you link to them.
If you see two stars you will need to enter some information that will allow you to link to your profile with a username.
It is also possible to change the order in which the sites appear. Just click anywhere on the grey bar of the site and drag it up and down to move it into a different position.
Social media page - changing the position of two sites.
Social media page - position changed.
To remove a social media page from the list just delete the username in the box and update. Any fields with blank usernames will not be displayed.
Embed The List Into A Page/Post
After setting up the needed fields in your administration section you can display the list on any page or post by using the following tag:
<!-- social-media-page -->
With the keyword and the two sites in the previous images entered, the output would look something like this.
Social media page - page output.
The look of the list depends on the stylesheet that you have in your template. It consists of a simple unordered list wrapped in a div with the id of “smp-wrapper”.
Make sure you add this tag in HTML mode as the visual editor will convert the characters into HTML and display the tag instead of the list of social media profiles.
Comments?
If you notice any bugs or feel that this plugin can be improved in any way then let me know! Also, the list is far from complete, so if you feel that I have left any sites out then I will create an update and add those sites in.
Note that I have created this plugin in my own time so although I will try to fix any problems quickly, that might not always be the case.
Changes in version 1.3
- Added a fix for a typo in the Friendfeed profile.
- Added an option to add rel=”nofollow” to the links created by this plugin.
- Tidied up widget code to incorporate widget options from theme.
Changes to Version 1.2
- This plugin can now be used as a widget.
- Plugin output tweaked to have normal output for pages and smaller output when printing widget.
- Added option to allow blog admin to decide if credit should be given to plugin author.
- Noticed bug when updating plugin causing no images to be displayed. This was due to file permissions. Added a function that sets file permissions properly at install.
Changes to Version 1.1
- Fixed some incorrect information in some of the profile information.
Donate!
If you like this plugin then you can help with development through a donation.
Hi – great plugin, thanks! One comment, not really a bug though: the YouTube link points to the UK subdomain, which of course makes a lot of sense in the country where you live; although in fact this shouldn’t lead to a necessarily wrong destination, perhaps it might be possible to offer an option or setting to use either the standard (www.youtube.com) or some other “localized” subdomain (such as uk.youtube.com or es.youtube.com). The “personalized” content that YouTube offers is partly based on the subdomain used, and it may not always be pertinent. Other than that minor tangential comment: thanks again for the plugin!
I’m an atheist too. Great plugin
Thanks for the feedback – and encouragement. Good spot regarding the youtube.com sub domain. I created this plugin with the intention of using the international domains such as http://www.yahoo.com. So adding in en is just a mistake on my behalf. I have corrected that and will update the plugin in the next couple of days.
Good idea about the international thing though, will think about that for a future major update!
Great plugin!
The only suggestion I would made, is the possibility to have one profile for each user.
Hi Phil
Nice tool, A few points you may want to consider,
1. Option to have the links open in new tabs / windows.
2. Option to have nofollow on the links, something that some SEO’s like to do.
3. Ability to embed into the template, I would rather have this information in a side bar / footer than a page in the site.
A few points for version two
Good points there. I’m not a big fan of nofolow, so I left it out. But you are right that adding in that option would be good for some people.
Also like the widget/template idea – will look into it!
It must have taken a lot of patience to bring together 100 media sites. I will try to help you with the nofollow feature. Congratulations on a very well designed plugin. Ironically most other plugins of similar nature are sidebar widgets rather than a page so this is definitely a new approach.
Your plugin works great, but I was looking to add the links to a sidebar widget instead of to a page. I added a few lines of code that you may find useful to add by default for others who have the same needs. The code is on my site: http://blog.4minds.com/?p=33
Wow! Thanks for the help Brian. You have basically done what I was going to do this weekend as an update to the plugin to make it widget friendly.
I was also thinking about what sort of output to use, I think a simple template file might be the way to go. With an option to give me credit, rather than forcing this on people.
Thanks again!
This is a cool plugin, thanks!
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Hi, I only have one request for this excellent plugin. Would you mind spelling Friendfeed with the “i” please? I am not a coder so couldn’t possibly do it myself. Thanks in advance. I haven’t updated the plugin as yet so it may already be fixed. I have installed it on a new project which hasn’t launched yet and this plugin is perfect for it! It’s really cool!
@Ange – I haven’t noticed that error, thanks for pointing it out. I have added a fix for it and will be releasing it very soon.
I will also be adding an option to add a nofollow attribute to the links, in case you want that.
I am still trying to decide how I am going to implement the plugin, but I wanted to mention something to the person asking about the nofollow option. I am a big proponent of dofollow blogging, but where social profiles and such are concerned it is bad SEO. I would suggest that you get the robots meta plugin which will allow you to nofollow and/or noindex any page you like.
Thanks a bunch Philip for the update! Appreciated!
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How can I change the name (label) that displays from “Social Media” to a personal identifier?
@Russell – look at line 679 in the file social-media-page.php and change the ‘Social Media’ here to whatever you want.
Good idea for an addition to the next version.
Can we have a profile option for MSN messenger please Phil
Hi, I installed wordpress 2.7 from scratch and the plug-in. Is my first installation, so I haven’t any information about previous versions. Unfortunally it seems not working. There is no new table in the DB and the configuration page does not have any field to add profiles.
Any ideas?
Thank you very very much
Cool plugin. One thing I would say to look into is to make it work for blogs with multiple authors, so that there is a link to multiple authors profiles, in case there is one. So author one can be and author two could be something like this way different authors can put their own sites links. Just a thought.
I will be releasing a new version at some point over the next week or so there are a couple of things that I want to do to the plugin, although the multi user thing will have to wait for now. I will also try and install the plugin from scratch to see if there are any bugs with the install.
Thanks for this plug-in! It is very helpful. I don’t do alot of social networking, except Twitter and Facebook.
Is it possible to have a link to a Facebook group? I want to lead readers to our group page and not to a personal profile.
Thanks!
Sure, I’ll add it to the “to do” list.
Is anyone else having a problem changing the order of the profiles using the drag and drop interface?
I’ll make a change by dragging a profile to the top of the list, click the update button, and when the page reloads the profiles are back to the order they were in when I started.
I’ve tried in FF 2.0.0.20 and 3.0.5, as well as IE 7, with the same result in all three.
To those of you having trouble sorting the profiles through the drag/drop interface this is because the plugin will only save profile information if you have added something to the profile box for that site. This includes the sort order.
This was a decision I made early on to save on the number of database calls that the plugin makes. Sorry if this has tripped anyone up, would anyone like me to change this for the next version?
I was thinking of adding a button called “sort alphabetically”, which would sort the sites automatically by username or site name. Or even an option to move the entries that have been filled in to the top of the list.
Thanks for this great plugin! I too am having problems ordering the items. I’m not sure I understand your explanation. I have info in an item but it will not reorder through drag and drop. Can you please explain how to make this work or change it in the next version?
Thanks again.
Glad you liked it!
With regards to sorting I think I will just rewrite it. I’ll keep the drag and drop but recode the way in which the order is saved to make it more usable and reliable.
Hi!
Nice plugin. I agree with Stranger. Would be really nice with support for multiple authors. Thanks!
This makes linking to social networks a lot easier. Thank you! There are a couple of features I would like to see: I would love to see Backtype come to your plugin. I would also like options for a couple of additional layouts. For instance, it would be nice to have a widget layout that would include only favicons. It would also be nice to see a multi-column layout that is otherwise the same as the current layout.
great plugin man … this is awesome
I love the plug in. I’ve been looking for a Social Media Plugin like this one for a long time since I saw one similar to it on someone else’s blog. I just need to figure out how to get the links to open in a new window. Can you tell me how?
@Signupandmakemoney – I would suggest that you don’t have the links open a new window as this goes against usability guidelines. Any user should expect that a link opens up on the same window (or tab).
In order to do this you should edit the function smpCreatePage() on line 590 in (version 1.3) so that the links include the attribute target=”_blank”.
However, this attribute is not XHTML valid, so if that worries you then you can try using a rel attribute which you can alter using JavaScript.
Hi,
Need some help.. I am looking to add the social media widget on left menu of my page and this left sidebar is a fixed bar which i need to change in the code. I am looking for something like the below to call this widget on the left sidebar.
Archives
Can you please help?
Regards
Krishna
Thanks a lot for sharing this plugin.i love it’s functionality.
have a good day
Thanks for the great plugin!
One question though, since i’m not a coder, would it be possible to add Writing.com into the social media list? Since i’m a writer, i have identities on many of the popular social media websites, however, writing.com is a social media/blogging/writing in gerenal site that majority of newbie writers use to display their works.
Anyway, thanks again for great plugin.
@Chibi – Sure thing – I’m working on a new version a the moment so I’ll pop in that site.
Missing:
blip.fm
blip.tv
Those are neither missing or missed at all.
Is it possible to link a Facebook group instead of user?
wishing to enter the widget in the sidebar via a php code, it is possible?
@mkultra – Yes, you just need to call the main function directly. Something like this should do it.
<?phpecho smpCreatePage();
?>
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Hi Philip,
Social Media Page plug in is fantastic. Thank you for all your great work. A couple of things. I notice that the link to my Friendster page is not working as the plug in adds a / to the end after the username, but the site does not appear to require this, so it generates an error. Also, I use a site http://www.wayn.com and was wondering if it was possible to add this to your plugin.
I look forward to hearing from you soon.
Kind regards
Leighton
Sorry, total nube… where exactly do I insert this tag?
Nevermind, I got it! B-E-A-utiful!
Hi, are we able to link a Facebook Fan or Group page instead of a personal profile page? If so, what do we need to do to change it? Thanks!
Would love it if you’d add Etsy with your next upgrade.
I see a few people have asked about adding groups to facebook rather than a personal profile. Has there been any update to this?
Cheers!
Never mind, I see it! Thanks!