One of the four ways of identifying the author of the post and linking it with rel=”author” to the author page is using AuthorSure’s “post footnote”.
The footnote appears at the foot of the post content but before the comment section.
An Example of An Author FootNote
Here is an example of how it appears visually: a simple notification of the date the post was last updated with an underlined link to the author page.
Last updated by Russell on October 14, 2011.
However the HTML code itself is laden with information for the search engines:
<p class="updated authorsure-footnote" itemscope="" itemtype="http://schema.org/WebPage" itemid="http://www.slickrflickr.com/56/how-to-use-slickr-flickr-to-create-a-slideshow-or-gallery/">Last updated by <span class="author vcard"><span class="fn"><a rel="author" href="http://www.slickrflickr.com/author/admin/" class="authorsure-author-link">Russell</a></span></span> on <time itemprop="dateModified" datetime="2011-10-14T18:28:36+00:00">October 14, 2011</time>.</p>
This snippet is validated by the Google Rich Snippet Test Tool without any warnings.
The code uses the “WebPage” schema and the item property “dateModified” to specify when the page was updated, it also use the HTML5 ‘time’ element and the “updated”, and “vcard” classes as well as of course the all important rel=”author”.
When To Use Author Footnotes
This author linking method is appropriate when:
- you have more than one author on your site;
- your WordPress theme does not provide rel=”author” links in the post byline;
- your theme shows the publication date of the post rather than the last time it was updated – this makes your posts look dated
- you do not want to show the last time the post was updated just beneath the heading of the post and prefer to have the date in the post footnote where it is less obtrusive
Personally I am using the Author Footnotes approach on my Thesis sites.
How To Change the Appearance of the FootNote
There are few ways to influence the footnote: three within the AuthorSure plugin and the fourth by adding your own CSS to your WordPress theme’s stylesheet, style.css .
Author Prefix
In the AuthorSure Options page you can choose your own version of the text that precedes the author name in the footnoye – the “Last updated by”. For example, you might want to use “By” or of course something else if your site is not in English.
Date Prefix
In the AuthorSure Options page you can choose your own version of the text that precedes the date in the footnote – the “at”. For example, you just want to use “on” or of course something else if your site is not in English.
Show Updated Date
In the AuthorSure Options page you can choose not to show any date at all in the footnote: it just contains the link to the author.
Customize Footnote Appearance
The plugin specifies the CSS classes authorsure-footnote and authorsure-author-link which you can add as elements to your theme style.css file. This allows you to make sure that these style elements are controlled by your theme.
So for example if your theme always has footnotes in small capitals, and links in blue then you would add the following lines to style.css.
p.authorsure-footnote { font-variant: small-caps; }
a.authorsure-author-link, a.authorsure-author-link:visited { color: blue; }
Note that that should add these line to the theme’s style.css file and not any plugin CSS file. This will preserve they contents when the plugin is updated.
About Russell
Technologist, software engineer, internet marketer and WordPress plugin developer with experience in Finance, Telecoms and the Media.
I think I may have established that due to me running semilogic I have to use Author footnote which I have done however, I don’t see my google + account or any other account links I have created.
I’d be grateful of help.
I have also posted a link to your site on the semilogic forum
Phill,
Have you gone to “Your Profile” page and added your Google Plus URL?
If so you should see the GooglePlus Link appear on your author page. Your author page will have a URL similar to http://www.authorsure.com/author/admin
Hi
Yes http://www.enablefinance.com/author/phill
Sorry ment to finish off the comment… I have put all my account details into the author setup screen
turned on the foot note box and my blog posts have this at the footer http://www.enablefinance.com/finance/the-market-for-bridging-loans-is-growing-fast.html – not sure why it has http://schema.org/WebPage” itemid= this bit…
but just don’t see my accounts – sorry
Phill, some other plugin is interfering with the code AuthorSure is adding.
AuthorSure is adding code:
But another plugin is trying to turn the itemtype and itemid parameters into anchor links:
You need to deactivate your other plugin or stop it from messing with attributes in an arbitrary fashion. Look for a “smart-linking” plugin or something of that ilk.
Phill,
Your WordPress theme seems to have its own version of the author pages and is not calling the default WordPress hooks or is just replacing the default content with its own version of the page. Note that it is your theme and not AuthorSure that is adding the author bio at the top of the page.
Does your theme have any settings to get it behave “normally” on author pages? For example, does it is have an option to switch off the addition of the author bio at the top of author pages?
If the theme is inflexible as well as non-standard from a WordPress standpoint, and given that I presume you want to stick with it as you are broadly happy with it, then just add the following line to the foot of your author bio.
N.B. Type the above line in rather than copy/paste it as I have doctored the HTML to make it visible within a comment
This completes the linking between your posts, author pages and Google Plus and hopefully allows your posts to be verified by the Google Rich Snippets Markup Tool
Great advice Russell, many thanks for your support
I will make a point of raising this issue and linking to the page in the semilogic forum.
Regards