Inspired by the Wil Reynolds keynote at Affiliate Summit as well as Eric Nagel’s custom rel=”author” coding, I convinced my husband that I needed a plugin for my sites. Most of my sites run the Thesis theme, so I asked him to make it Thesis specific. He likes to think bigger than that, so he created it to run on any WordPress blog. You can visit the Easy Rel Author plugin page for more information if you are not running Thesis. If you are running Thesis, keep reading to find out how the plugin works for you.

What’s the Purpose?

If you are not sure yet why you even need to include rel=”author” on your posts, check out the search results below. I did a search for “seasonality in affiliate marketing.” Although my own post about my Seasonality session at Affiliate Summit ranks highest, Eric’s post grabs your attention first because of his picture next to it. How did he get his picture there? He’s included rel=”author” in his blog.

Search Result Example

Before the Plugin:

Before you even modify your site or add the Rel=”Author” Plugin, you need to set up a Google Plus profile for yourself. You then need to add profile links FROM your Google Profile to any sites that you blog on. These go on your About page on the right side. (see my Google Profile below)

Google Profile Links

Install the Plugin:

The Easy Rel Author Plugin is very simple. Click here to download it. Install it and then choose whether you want your Author Byline to link to your Google Profile or whether you would like an additional line added to your footer. The default is your Author Byline.

If you choose the additional line added to your footer, you will also need to choose whether you want a small Google Plus image or your name for the link. You’ll see that for this blog, I chose the default Author Byline link at the top of my posts. If you want to use it as a footer, check the first option in the settings. If you want it as a footer but your name rather than the Google+ image, check both of these boxes:

Footer Options in Settings

Add Your Google+ URL to Your Profile:

For each user on your blog, go into their User Profile and add their Google+ URL to the Contact Info section.

Add Google+ URL to Profile

Link Your Byline:

If you choose to have your Byline as the rel=”author” link, you will need to go into your “Thesis Option” “Display Option” “Bylines” and check “Link author names to archives.” If you are going the footer option, you do not need to do this.

Testing 1, 2, 3:

Although it can take a week or two to see your picture in the search results, you can use Google’s Rich Snippets Testing Tool to test your individual posts to see if they are working. I’ve heard that new posts take a couple of weeks but older posts can take even longer depending upon how frequently your posts are crawled. You may also need to fill out Google’s Authorship Request form. From what I can tell, Google is still manually deciding who can use this functionality and who cannot. The general consensus is that it will be turned on for everyone before too long.

Those are the basics. The plugin is still brand new, so I’m sure that we will quickly get a lot of feedback. I wouldn’t be surprised to see something built into Thesis soon to take care of this. If you are not using Thesis and still want to use the plugin, you can follow most of the above but go to Easy Rel Author Plugin for more information.

Please let us know if you are using the plugin and if you start seeing results!

Updated 10-11-11 The plugin works! It took me awhile to get my profile approved, but as you can see below, my picture is now showing up next to my search results. You can see that it is much bigger than the pictures below the search results where people have +1 the post. The only thing that I am confused about is that it seems like it is only working some of the time. I am guessing that it is just a matter of getting replicated across all of Google’s servers at this point? But it is progress!

The Rel=Author Plugin Works!

I’ve stated before that I am a huge Thesis WordPress Theme fan. In fact, I only use Thesis on all of the new blogs that I start. Everyone talks about the obvious benefits of using Thesis like how customizable it is and the search engine optimization built into it. But I have found another huge benefit to using Thesis–I’m actually learning!

By education, I’m a lawyer. That’s about as far from coding as you can get. In the law, everything is about making an argument, playing devil’s advocate, and seeing both sides to an issue. It’s all gray. Coding is black and white. One comma means the difference between your site showing up or being a big blank error message. It’s right or it’s wrong. With no formal education in coding, I have to learn as I go.

Using Thesis, I am able to actually learn things like “hooks” and “css.” There are so many blog posts out there about customizing your Thesis installs that you can actually start to learn the coding just from reading them. In addition, the Thesis forum is so robust that you can read thread after thread about how different parts of the code works. When I reached the point that the blog posts and forum started making sense to me, I knew that I was learning something about the actual coding.

I won’t proclaim to be an expert, but through using Thesis and all of the accompanying official and unofficial documentation, I am understanding how to edit headers and footers, modify css, and even move columns. It’s taking me from being a simple blogger with a basic theme to being able to make enough changes to my sites (and understand how those changes are being made) that I feel like the sites are really mine.  I have a long way to go, but I’m learning more each week. What has your experience with Thesis been like? Do you stick to the basic layout, modify it a little, or go all out to make it your own?

So why did I decide to use a Thesis WordPress Theme for this blog? I’ve tried lots of different themes, some free and some not. I’ve done some customizing of various themes. The site of mine that I love the most (although it gets the least traffic and attention) is my chocolate site, www.chocolatepicnic.com. Why do I love it? Because it’s pretty! Compared to all of my other sites, I think it came together the best. I used Revolution on some other sites, as well as Cutlines. But Thesis was the easiest to customized and sharpest looking.

Because I already had one Thesis license, I could upgrade to the “developer” license for only $77 and be able to use Thesis on as many of my sites as I want going forward. What a bargain!

I still have a lot to customize on here, but it looks 100 times better than it did 10 minutes ago. And by the end of the week, it will be beautiful (although maybe not as beautiful as Chocolate Picnic).

You can check out the These Theme for yourself at http://diythemes.com/thesis/.