Google+ is still in limited beta but invites have started opening up, and many more users are jumping on board. If you love Google+ and want to publicly display a link to your profile on your WordPress site, we have a couple methods that are easy to employ. We’ll take a look at both in this post and you can decide which is right for you.

Plugin Method:

The first and perhaps the easiest way to display your Google+ profile link is to use a plugin.

Step 1: Install the googleCards Plugin

The googleCards plugin for WordPress allows you to drag and drop a widget that will show your Google+ avatar, a button to add to circles and the number of followers you have. Install this and the widget will be available under Appearance » Widgets » googleCards.

Step 2: Find your Google+ ID

The widget requires your Google+ ID. You can find your Google+ ID by clicking on your profile and copying the long number from the URL at the top of the page.

You’ll get a widget similar to the one pictured here:

Pros: Widget includes profile pic and follower count, Plugin caches Google+ profile data
Cons: Styling may need adjusting – looks a bit off to me, Link opens on the Google+ posts page for the user with no option to easily change it

Google Profile Button Method:

The other option for displaying a link to your Google+ profile is to create a button using Google webmasters button profile button page.

Step 1: Generate your profile button

Go to Google’s profile button generator and make your selections. You can choose for the link to go to the author page or the content page, which are described in detail in the relevant Google help article. Select your button size and your code will automatically be generated for you.

Step 2: Paste the code into a text widget

You can add the code to your site by pasting it into a widget or into one of your theme’s template files – ie. footer.php.

You’ll get something similar to this:

Pros: Choice of Author vs. Content URL for the link, Official icon
Cons: No profile pic or options to personalize the display

We’re looking forward to seeing more Google+ plugins coming to the plugin repository as the service opens up to more users. In the meantime, hopefully you’ll be able to put one of these methods to use.