July 11, 2011 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.
Sarah Gooding on Google+
Thanks sarah! I have heard of people redirecting their website/blog url to their google plus page. Kevin Rose said his interaction has spikes by forwarding http://www.kevinrose.com to his google plus account. What are your thoughts on this?
Why would you do that? Does his website not have any content? Can’t see a reason for it.
I’m with Sarah… Unless there is minimal or no content at the domain URL, I can’t see any benefit to forward it. I’d love to hear the reasoning.
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I’ve just recently got a plus invite, so will work on adding my profile to my other social profiles!
Still waiting for an invite
I can’t seem to find the googlecards plugin anywhere. Does it still exist?
It’s available at the devs site. Downloaded and installed on 3 sites today. Works great!
http://plusdevs.com/google-wordpress-plugin/
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LOL…nice choice of featured celeb! (ッ)-b
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