User Bio Popup plugin for WordPress

This WordPress plugin searches posts and pages for the nicknames of authors. When it finds one, it turns it into a link which brings up a popup window with the author’s bio and image. It uses the contents of the ‘About Yourself’ field in the user’s profile for the actual bio, and the image used depends on which of the two methods you select. The options page for this plugin allows you to configure the popup’s heading, width, height, and more. It also is fully customizable with the built-in CSS in the popup template file.

Download

• Latest Release (For WordPress 2.0 through 2.8+)

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Instructions

• Download dd-user-bio-popup.zip and uncompress
• Upload dd-user-bio-popup.php to your plugin directory
• Upload ddub-template.php to your theme directory
• Enable the plugin
• Configure the plugin options (under DDUserBioPopup). More information on that is below

Upgrading

Be sure to download both files when you upgrade, and check the options and the information on this page to make sure something has not been changed.

Change Log

• 09-29-07 Version 2.4 – ‘Load Default Options’ button added. Tested with WP 2.3
• 05-16-07 Version 2.3 – Updated for WordPress 2.2.
• 04-06-06 Version 2.2 – Now in the options, you enter the FULL URL to the images directory. It should help make things a bit more standard. Everything validates now as well.
• 04-05-06 Version 2.1 – Image detection code improved, gravatar code improved, and a few other little things.
• 04-04-06 Version 2.0 – Popup code completely redone. Now popup window has it’s own template file. Images are now supported (Uploaded and Gravatars), as well as many other fixes and updates.
• 04-02-06 Version 1.0 – First release.

Using images

The image used depends on your settings. This plugin allows you to create a directory, and upload images to it. You must simply specify the full URL to this directory in the options.

If you like, you could use a directory that your other author’s have access to, so they can upload their images themselves.

For image file names, simply use the author’s nickname – lower case, with spaces removed. The plugin will search for matching files that are either jpg, gif, or png.

Example

Let’s say your wordpress installation is at http://www.somesite.com/wp/ and you create a subdirectory called authors for the images. In your options page you would enter http://www.somesite.com/wp/authors/ for the directory.

Let’s also say that you have a user called Some User. You would want to call the image someuser.jpg (or gif or png). That’s it!

Now if the plugin cannot find a matching image, and Gravatars are enabled, it will try to find one by using the author’s email address (in their profile).

This plugin uses its own code for Gravatars, so you do not have to install anything else. If you are already using a Gravatar plugin, that is fine. They will not conflict.

Configuring

The CSS code for the popup window is contained in the template file (ddub-template.php). Feel free to change this to fit your site.

Options

Here are the settings available in this plugin’s options page in the WordPress admin panel.

Author images directory

This is the full url to your author image directory. This is where you can choose to store images for each author.

Use Gravatars?

If enabled, and an author image cannot be found in the specified directory, the author’s gravatar will be used. If you want to always use gravatars, just leave the ‘author images directory’ option blank.

Heading for the popup

This will be shown at the top of the popup window. If you want to include the user’s name, use %U.

Hover text for link

This will be shown when the visitor’s mouse is hovered over the link. If you want to include the user’s name, use %U.

Popup window width

Self-explanatory.

Popup window height

Self-explanatory.

CSS for popup window

This allows you to completely customize the popup window. The #wrapper div is around the content.

Other Modifications

If you would like the popup window to have a scroll bar, just search for the following code in the main script file:

scrollbars=0

And change it to this:

scrollbars=1