Adding a custom author box, using a photo or your gravatar, at the bottom of your wordpress posts should be a snap. Links to your social profiles, a short bio, a picture, a reminder to subscribe: these are very basic and powerful features that you should be using on the bottom of every post to turn readers into fans.
But after a couple days of pulling my hair out trying to put in what I wanted, I was going crazy.
I tried all the author box plugins. Nothing did what I wanted, and I could style it at all.
So here’s what I finally did to make it work.
Step One:
Add the “ultimate shortcodes” plugin. It’s free. It let’s you make all kinds of neat boxes.
Open up a new post, upload a picture of yourself, left justify, and add in your text. It’s easy to add links like usual in the normal wordpress post editor.
Use a shortcode to style the box. I used the “Colored Note” and changed the color to a very light gray, which gives the box a simple but elegant style. The shortcodes have to go around all your content, even the picture, like this:
<img title=”nice” src=”http://www.holyblasphemy.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/nice-150×150.jpg” alt=”” width=”140″ height=”140″ /><strong>Derek Murphy</strong> is a writer, artist and researcher from Oregon, currently finishing his PhD in Taiwan. He writes sweeping non-fiction treatises on religious history, comparative mythology and popular culture. Soon he’ll be moving to Romania to study vampire mythology. If you’d like to hear about his upcoming projects or books, you can follow him on <a title=”Follow on Twitter” href=”http://twitter.com/#!/HolyBlasphemy”>Twitter</a>, join the <a href=”http://www.facebook.com/HolyBlasphemy2″>Facebook</a> page, or<a href=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/HolyBlasphemy”> subscribe by RSS</a>.[/gn_note]
Now that it looks the way you want (you can preview the post to check), you need to install the “Add-Post-Footer” plugin.
Once installed, you can copy your html code from the post you made into the Add Poster Footer plugin (in any of the fields that allow code), and set it above or below the optional related posts.
Mine looks like this (not for this website, for another one).
I’m a philosophy dropout with a PhD in Literature. I covet a cabin full of cats, where I can write fantasy novels to pay for my cake addiction. Sometimes I live in castles.
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