Small WordPress Twitter Enhancement To Your Self-Hosted Blog

Do you want to have your blog author name point to your Twitter account? I have been playing around with a few self-hosted WordPress.org blogs and their PHP.

It’s worth it though! If you want to have your single-author blogs [I feel pretty sure there is a way to do this for multiple-author blogs to do this via php, I just don’t know–any PHP people want to comment?] to point to your twitter account then simply change the following code on single.php and index.php. single.php helps create the page when someone clicks on one specific blog and index.php is what is used to create your front page (see WordPress Theme Template File List). [You may also want to check page.php; however, these usually do not include an <?php the_author() ?>]

Under Single.php (Single Post) under Appearance > Editor, find the code that states:

<span>Written By: <?php the_author() ?>&nbsp;on&nbsp;<?php the_time(‘F j, Y’); ?></span>

And change it to:

<span>Written By: <a href=”http://www.twitter.com/TWITTERUSERNAME”><?php the_author() ?></a>&nbsp;on&nbsp;<?php the_time(‘F j, Y’); ?></span>

Be sure to put in your Twitter Username where I have TWITTERUSERNAME.

And do the same thing on your index.php (under Appearance > Editor), find the code that states:

<span>Written By: <?php the_author() ?>&nbsp;on&nbsp;<?php the_time(‘F j, Y’); ?></span>

And change it to:

<span>Written By: <a href=”http://www.twitter.com/TWITTERUSERNAME”><?php the_author() ?></a>&nbsp;on&nbsp;<?php the_time(‘F j, Y’); ?></span>

Be sure to put in your Twitter Username where I have TWITTERUSERNAME.

Then in your PROFILE (Users > Your Profile), change your NickName (required) to your Twitter Username. For example, your Nickname may simply be your FIRST LAST name (ie. Kris Dunn at HRCapitalist.com or Laurie at punkrockhr.com) and you can change it to @TWITTERUSERNAME so people will see it and can click on it. It doesn’t matter if you change it or not because your name will be hyperlinked to your Twitter profile (good for Google & SEO!).

WARNING: I do not know PHP, have not been trained in PHP, and have no creditials whatsoever, not even Lynda.com, so try at your own risk! When I am editing my index.php I copy the current php into a Notepad txt file and save it. Then edit away. It’s like creating a backup, sort of? But again, I am no expert by any means.