[Plugin: Author Avatars List] Display authors side by side

Hi mugilan02,

Your author’s are displayed line by line because the plugin’s styles do not get applied properly. It looks like you’re theme is doing something different in showing widgets; you’re missing a container around the widget holding the class “multiwidget_author_avatars”.

Usually themes have a “before widget” and “after widget” code defined on their sidebars (theme functions.php), for example:

register_sidebar( array(
    'name' => 'Sidebar Name',
    'before_title' => '<h3>',
    'after_title' => '</h3>',
    'before_widget' => '<div id="%1$s" class="widget %2$s">',
    'after_widget' => '</div >',
) );

It’s important that the “before_widget” bit is set and that it contains class="widget %2$s".

If changing the html markup is not an option you could also just take the css styling from widgets.css, copy it to your theme’s style.css and strip the .multiwidget_author_avatars bits.

Because of the way avatars are handled by wordpress and gravatar there is no easy way to distinguish between a proper avatar and a placeholder image (“no avatar”) as far as I know.

Ben

Ben,

You rock man !!!!!!!!!

'before_widget' => '<div id="%1$s" class="widget %2$s">',

I include the code above and now can see the avatars being displayed in a cloud.

Thanks a lot man. Keep up the good work ??

hello bforchhammer, gosh, I’m missing something. I want to display my Author Avatars in a cloud on the sidebar too! I have the avatars on several pages — index, single, comments, and author page — but cannot figure out how to code the widget for the sidebar. (I’m self-hosting, so can’t use the admin widget.) The code I’m using <?php wp_list_authors('exclude_admin=1&hide_empty=1'); ?> displays a vertical list of usernames only — no avatars. Can you help? Do I install all the Author-Avatars files manually? Thanks! dabuzzing.org

hey Ben, Sorry to bug you. I found the page where you had already answered my question about hand-coding this plugin. It worked great! (https://www.ads-software.com/support/topic/218939/page/2?replies=66)

However…can I add my blog’s default avatar for those Authors without one? What code would I use in the sidebar? The cloud Author display looks great, but has many missing icons. I’m using the code you provided elsewhere:

<?php require_once(ABSPATH . PLUGINDIR . '/author-avatars/lib/UserList.class.php' );
			$userlist = new UserList();
			$userlist->hiddenusers = array('admin');
			$userlist->roles = array('Administrator', 'Editor', 'Author');
			$userlist->link_to_authorpage = true;
			$userlist->show_name = false;
			$userlist->avatar_size = 20;
			$userlist->limit = 30;
			$userlist->order = 'display_name';
			$userlist->output();
			?>

We are looking at doing this

It may be posable to send a default avatar URL to the avatar service we are looking at how we can do this.

But you need to understand that use the WordPress/BuddyPress avatar code to fetch the images so sometimes there are limits as to what we can do.

Paul

Here’s a post about how to add a custom “default avatar”: https://wpengineer.com/add-avatar-to-wordpress-default/

That should work nicely in combination with our plugin as we the plugin makes use of wordpress core avatar functions.

hey again. Thanks for your help and information. Last night I tried to use the code at wpengineer, but the edits to my functions.php made no avatars appear on the Admin|Discussion options page. I had to give up when, sleepy and exhausted, I created a code error in functions and had to upload the original one. UGH! It would be an ideal solution though if only I could figure out why it doesn’t work. I use Cutline 2pt1 theme (dabuzzing.org) running the latest WP version. No XHTML or CSS errors either. What is “template_directory”? I don’t see that on any of the php pages on my site. Maybe I had the wrong path, but I tried several. Even put the images (.jpg) in the root. Anything else I could try? Thanks again!

function typebee_default_avatar( $avatar_defaults ) {
	$myavatar = get_bloginfo('template_directory') . '/avatar.jpg';
	$avatar_defaults[$myavatar] = 'Typebee Avatar';
	return $avatar_defaults;
}
add_filter( 'avatar_defaults', 'typebee_default_avatar' );

That added to functions.php and the avatar put as “avatar.jpg” into the directory of your active theme should do the job.

Get some sleep and try again ??

hey bforchhammer, it worked! Thank you so much. Are you a genius!? I think so! I’m going to make a donation to your author-avatars plugin.

My pleasure, thanks!

another question, if I may. How can I style the sidebar author avatars differently than the avatars on page or post? Which CSS file do I look for? In the sidebar I would like less padding. Thanks again!

The sidebar avatars are styled by the css styles defined in css/widget.css, the avatars on a page/post by the styles in css/shortcode.css.

Hey again. Still trying to put a different style on the sidebar author avatars at dabuzzing.org using the above php code you provided.

In my custom.css, I added this:

.author-list .avatar {
float: left;
display: block;
margin: 0;
padding: 1px;
border: solid 1px #ddd;
background-color: #fff;
color: #000;
}

That works in both Firefox & IE. However, in IE the link to the author.php pages is there but not clickable. I cannot find the anchor link. What is the answer, oh wise one? I know you know! Thanks again.

Looks like some element gets displayed “in front” of your avatar pictures and blocks the user from clicking the links

It sounds like you need to do some css debugging (identify which css statement causes it by taking away stylesheets or parts of stylesheets; narrow it down; once you’ve found what’s causing it you can google a solution). Especially if it did work before, remove what you’ve added and put it back in little bits…. ??