This post is for those who are running a multi-authors blog using WordPress and Thesis Theme, I am going to show you how to customize author archive page and display any extra information to it.
This is an answer for a question I received through Twitter from my friend Devesh of Technshare.com, I actually wanted to write this post since long time but didn’t find enough motivation, I love question because it help me to put a nice and useful post on our blog, so thank you Devesh, you have certainly helped on writing this Thesis post.
Note: For those who are not using Thesis Theme on their blogs, they can add the code to their theme functions.php file, also you should know that this code works out of the WordPress loop this means you can use it anywhere else like sidebar for example!.
Working with Thesis Theme
I know that working with Thesis Theme is too much pain for some of you, you will know this if you know What top niche web designers say about Thesis Theme, this maybe because almost all tutorials are spreading allover the internet and you got tired finding exactly what you need, also some tutorials are not so clear or provide a small shot of information while you need to find a complete resource that tells you good stuff, so… I am trying to help you with this as much as I can!
Removing WordPress Default Profile Fields
First of all, I have removed the WorPress default profile fields because I think it’s not necessary anymore, and instead I have added two new fields for Twitter and Facebook. And basically I am not displaying the Facebook field right now on the author archive pages because I didn’t find the time to add it, but this is going to be something I will certainly do, and maybe I will add an extra URL field, so our authors can use these to add two different sites, for example their personal blog and business blog.
Here is a fast tip on how to remove WordPress default profile/Bio fields and replace them with Twitter and Facebook, actually there is no need to add AIM, Yahoo IM, and the Jabber/Gtalk anymore, so I just decided to remove those fields by using the code I found at wpbeginner.com How to Remove Default Author Profile Fields in WordPress and then I have added Twitter and Facebook fields.
Here is the code that I am using on our blog by editing Thesis Theme custom_function.php file, plus the CSS style which you can add to the custom.css file. I really don’t mind to share it with you:
https://gist.github.com/3147246.js
Probably you will notice that this is almost the same code I am using to display author box on posts, but it works out of the WordPress loop!
P.S. (just don’t forget to customize the style to play nicely with your blog)
Enjoy!