WordPress Simple Image Link Plugin
WordPress Simple Image Link offers all users a new way for putting images in your sidebars.
Specifically designed for those with little or no HTML knowledge, WordPress Simple Image Link will save you time and effort when displaying support buttons, ads and, well, anything else which uses an image.
Once the plugin is installed, just add the “Simple Image Link” widget to any of your sidebars. Add 1, add 2, add as many as you need.
Current Version:
- Version 2.2
WordPress Compatibility:
WordPress: 2.8+
If you are currently using WordPress 2.7, please use version 2.1.1.
Download:
Download WordPress Simple Image Link Plugin.
NOTE:
If you were one of the three who downloaded it from our site, then please download the latest version from WordPress.org, since this will ensure you can use the automatic plugin update feature. The name of the plugin has changed from ‘Image Link’ to ‘Simple Image Link’ as there was a name conflict with the former.
History:
I wrote this plugin because it was a pain to create and update the HTML when using a text widget to display an image. Also, when there are multiple text widgets, you couldn’t remember which was which without going in and checking. Voila; WP Image Link was born.
Features/Benefits:
- Allows multiple widgets to be used within any or all of your blog sidebars.
- Widget title can be optionally displayed.
- Displays an image of any size.
- Allows the image to be scaled as an absolute pixel size or as a percentage of the original image size.
- Allows the image’s alternative text, for use by text readers, or when the image is not displayed, to be specified.
- Allows text to be displayed after the image, with an optional break between image and text.
- Allows the image to be aligned to the left or right of the sidebar, or centered within the sidebar.
- Allows a destination URL to be specified should the image be clicked on by the user.
- Allows the destination URL to be opened in the same, or a new, window.
- Allows the link for the destination URL to be created as a ‘nofollow’, ensuring Google juice does not flow to advertisers.
- Allows the image’s alternative text to be displayed as a popup on the image.
- Allows additional padding to be displayed above and below the image.
Installation:
- Upload the ‘image-link’ directory to your `/wp-content/plugins/` directory.
- Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress.
- Start adding “Image Link” widgets to your sidebars.
Screen shot of WordPress Simple Image Link:
Simple Image Link Properties
Title
The title is what is displayed within the widget header when viewing your current widgets within the WordPress dashboard.
Display title
Whether the title should be displayed within the sidebar (see image below).
Display image for the following users
Allow the widget to be displayed for users with specific roles.
- Do not display – The image is not displayed to anyone
- Not logged in – Normal users who do not log in
- Subscriber – Users with the subscriber role
- Contributor – Users with the contributor role
- Author – Users with the author role
- Editor – Users with the editor role
- Administrator – Users with the administrator role
The role can be qualified by:
- At least this role – The user can be of this role or above
- Only this role – The user is only this explicit role
Image location
The location of the image to be displayed. That is, it’s URL.
Image dimensions
The width and height of the image, expressed as pixels or as a percentage of the current size.
These are optional.
If no width and height are specified, then the image will be displayed in its original size.
If the original image is larger than you require, then you can explicitly set the width and the height of the image and the browser will display the image at this size.
For example, if the original image is 300 pixels wide by 300 pixels high, and you want to display it as 150 pixels wide by 150 pixels high, then set the width and the height to ‘150px’ and ‘150px’. ‘px’ is the unit for pixels.
Alternatively, you can set the width and height both to ‘50%’, and the browser will display the image at 50% of its original width and height.
Image alt text
This is the ‘alt’ or ‘alternative text’ that is shown when images can not be displayed, or a text reader is used.
Text to display after image
Some text can be displayed after image.
Break between image and text
Whether a break is inserted between the image and text. If not selected, then a non breaking space is inserted between the image and text to ensure some visual seperation.
Alignment
Method used to align the image within the sidebar.
Available methods are:
| Left |  |
| Center |  |
| Right |  |
Link location
The destination, i.e. the URL, where the user will be taken upon clicking on the image.
Link target
This allows you to select whether to open the link in the same browser window, or a new window.
Use nofollow on link
Google recommends using ‘nofollow’ for all paid (advertising) links. Select whether you want the link to be nofollow here.
Use shadowbox on link
Add shadowbox as a rel attribute value, so that the link is opened within a Shadow Box.
NOTE: Shadow Box must be provided external to this plugin.
Display image alt text as pop up/tool tip text
Select whether you want to display the image’s alt text; i.e. the text that appears as a popup/tooltip.
Additional padding
Additional padding can be applied above and/or below the image.
Padding units should be expressed as pixels (e.g. 123px) or a multiple of the current font size (e.g. 1.5em).
The screenshot below shows how the image is displayed when applying:
- Above padding of 50px
- Below padding of 3.0em.
Change Log
Version 2.2
WordPress 2.8 support.
Version 2.1
Use correct location of plugins folder when ‘WordPress address’ and ‘Blog address’ differ within Settings.
Fixed for Robert@PNG.
Version 2.0
Allow widget to be displayed based on the user’s role – inspired by Praveen Baratam [praveen.baratam AT gmail DOT com].
Two psuedo roles are added – ‘Do not display’ replaces the “Display image” property, and ‘Not logged in’ to display image should the user not be logged in (i.e. user does not have a proper role).
Version 1.6
Correctly display <, >, &, ” and ‘ characters.
Version 1.5.1
Fixed minor spelling mistake in Portuguese translation – thanks again to Alexandre Pereira.
Version 1.5
No functional changes.
Support added for translating the text within the widget via the simple-image-link.pot file.
Translations can now be made external to the core files, allowing upgrades to not affect independent translations.
Thanks to Alexandre Pereira for providing the incentive to do this the Portuguese translations.
Version 1.4
Allows image to be hidden without having to delete the widget.
Version 1.3
Allows ‘shadowbox’ to be included within the link’s rel attribute value.
NOTE: Shadow Box support must be provided external to this plugin.
Version 1.2
Added ability to specify text which appears within the sidebar.
Version 1.1
Changes to readme and screen shots.
Version 1.0
Initial version.
Hi Tanya,
The plugin has been working fine on my 2.7 blog for some time. I run the K2 theme – latest build (743) with about a squillion other plugins and have not found any issues related to this plugin specifically.
Regards,
R
Thanks Robert, I’ll look at the plugin again before I give up on it now that you’ve given me hope -
hi Mad,
is there a way to call this plugin direct, for a non widget ready blog and which syntax can be used then – ?! thanks for help and answer.
@Tanya – We are running 2.7 for Blog-Well and the images you see are all done using the plugin.
@nilson – Unfortunately there is no lower level interface which could be called. All entry points into the plugin’s code are all done through the multi-instance plugin interface used by WorPress. The plugin just provides an easy way to create an image element within a link element, without having to correctly encode it within WordPress’ standard text control.
Hello
I have tried to upload the image to my sidebar and there is an error, instead of the image is a small red cross?Any ideas?
@Adam – Enter the URL of the image within the browser address bar to confirm that the image exists. It is best to work with fully qualified resources, such as “http://example.com/images/foo.png”, or “/images/foo.png”.
Every time I want to open plugin menu to activate the plugin I always get 404 error. Before that I have copied the plugin to plugins direktory. What’s wrong with my blog?
Regards
Thanks a lot for the great plugin/widget. Good job.
I am using it to make links to my other social media sites and I was wondering if it would be possible somehow have the image links in a row next to each other? Kind of like having two or more of image links within the same sidebar widget? Now I have used two of them on top of each other, and that takes more space. Maybe a future feature?
Thanks a lot! Yellow regards.
[...] Simple Image Link [...]
FYI, scaling an image based on a percentage does not work in Safari on either the Mac or the PC. It seems to handle the width correctly, but it doesn’t handle the height. Entering the values in pixels does work, though. Percents work fine on FF Mac and PC and on IE7 PC (at least for me). Not sure if that’s fixable or not.
Just what I was looking for… I especially like the fact that you can use more than one image-link in the sidebar. Thanks!
Hello,
i’ve just installed the plugin and i’ve discovered that it does not respect the right border of my sidebar (a scroll appears down the page) making it larger. The problem is not the size of the image. Can somebody help me??!! Thanks a lot!
I can’t thank you enough for this information. I’ve spent the last 4 hours trying to hook up a link with an image and I was ready to start drinking! After I found your site, I was able to get it all done in about 3 minutes!
You’re the chilly-mostest!
I was looking for a widget to do banner exchanges in the sidebar, and came upon your plugin. This is simple to use and “Just Works”! Thanks a lot!!
Minor bug though, I download the latest ver. from WordPress.org, and the checkbox to display/not display the title is not working for me. The title of the pic is always displayed on the sidebar if there’s anything typed into the “title” box.
not a big problem, since I can just leave the title empty, but it will be kinda hard to find which is which in the widgets screen….
I’m somewhat new to WP and to widgets. Which means I’m a little confused, no make that a lot confused.
I’m creating a new WP site using the latest Branford Magazine theme. The theme has in the sidebar, space for an advert 250 x 250.
I would like to place 4 125 x 125 ads in this space. Two of the ads is for my own e-books the others will be for affiliate products. My understanding is once I sign-up as an affiliate I’ll get the codes for the ads to place. But how do I place my own ads for my e-book?
I’ve been doing searches on wordpress for over an hour + trying to find out how to place ads in the sidebar. I found the Simple Image Link plugin and it seems like it is what I need. I just don’t know how to use it and widgets, yet.
I’m feeling a little dense right now. I installed the Simple Image Link plugin and now I’m feeling even more lost. When I go on thisl site it looks as if I should be able to get this see the Screen shot of WordPress Simple Image Link: on my site in admin area. So I admit I don’t know what I’m doing.
The last part of the installation after activating the plugin is: start adding “image link” widgets to your sidebar.
Where do I add the “image link widget” and how. This is my first attempt at using widgets and am lost, help.
Thanks
Zanti
Hope this makes sense. Thanks.
Figured out what to do. Took me longer than what I would have liked, but when you new there is a learning curve. Excellent plugin and information here, thanks.
Hi,
Thank you for your pluggin !
I’m using the version 2.1.2 with wordpress 2.7 and since I moved my site, I get the following error messages :
Warning: array_keys() [function.array-keys]: The first argument should be an array in /home/www/d469670e6018fc92a811ae5a55db8676/web/wp-content/plugins/simple-image-link-bak/simple-image-link.php on line 445
Warning: Invalid argument supplied for foreach() in /home/www/d469670e6018fc92a811ae5a55db8676/web/wp-content/plugins/simple-image-link-bak/simple-image-link.php on line 445
Here is the line 445 :
foreach ( array_keys($options) as $o )
Would you have an idea of the problem and how to solve it?
Thank’s a lot,
Phil
Doesn’t work in WP 2.8
The widget shows up in the admin page, and i can drag it to the sidebar and configure, but it never shows on the site and when i return to the widget page, it’s gone.
For some reason the simple image link plugin won’t save on wordpress 2.8 does this happen for anyone else?
There is a major issue with 2.8
I’m also having the same problems with WordPress 2.8 as everyone else. Will wait until there is an update.
Will there be an update which fixes the problem in 2.8? I’m building a new site, going live in August which will rely pretty heavily on Simple Image Link. PLEASE update it!
Same Problem with 2.8 I hope there will be a fix. Thanks a lot for this great Plugin
Hi, this plug-in is perfect, thank you… except now it doesn’t work in Word Press version 2.8 Will you be updating the plugin for compatibility with the new Word Press versions??? i hope so, we need these simple plug-ins!
Just installed your absolutely wonderful Plugin widget, thank you.
However, it would seem that it does not work with latest version WP 2.8
The widget appears okay in the admin page – I can drag it to the sidebar and configure, but, it does not display on the site and when I return to admin page, the widget – it’s gone! (back to “available widgets”).
I do so hope that you are able to update, whilst being aware of your time, which is precious.
Many thanks.
hi in my wordpress is also not working to. I’m using version 2.8.4
Hi,
I am having exactly the same problem. I can add the widget in the admin page and modify the content etc. I can save and close the simple-image-link widget admin page. But when I navigate away from the admin page and come back to it the widget has disappeared from the sidebar!
Any idea whet is going on as I really love this plugin??
Thanks
John
HI,
I am a no-coder and i need help. I installed your simple but wonderful plugin on my site. The only thing that bothers me is the default padding. It’s too much. I tried adding negative padding pixels (e.g. -20px) but this didn’t work. Any help would be kindly appreciated.
Kind regards,
Johnny P.
@Johnny P You can´t use negative padding when you styling things. There is no support for negative padding in css. I´ve looked at your site and your right sidebar where you apparently have added the widget. The images dont´got any padding at all.
@Jonas
Hi and thanks for your reply. I know i have no padding at all, but that is my issue. The spaces between the images are by default too much that i actually need. Is there any way these default spaces could be more narrow? if this is not possible, i would have to look for another solution.
@johnny p. Well, the problem is no the image widget. It´s that the paddings and margins on the list elements that the widget is placed inside. Change these values.
I would recommend you to download the Firefox plugin Firebug to get a better view of the code that WordPress generating and how to write css rules to change it.
@Jonas,
I’m not a coder so some things are not common sense for me and i have to do my research more than a coder does. But you have pointed me in the right direction, thanks! I have changed certain values in my stylesheet where the widgetized sidebar is mentioned. Now i have more control over the padding through the widget itself.
Mad,
your plugin seems the only one that does the function I require, but it aint working with WP 2.8.4. Do you plan to upgrade it? I’m writing to you because I can’t code a hello world, and your plugin would help me a lot!
Thanks, and sorry to bother =)
Btw, what happens when I use the plugin is that the widget disappear after the configuration.
Cheers from Brasil!
I’d also love this to work on 2.8+. There have been quite a few comments on here regarding 2.8, would you please let us know if there any plans to get this working in 2.8+ ?
Many thanks.
At long last WordPress 2.8 support has been added.
Still not working in 2.8.4 for me. Same problem as described above. Great plug-in, any plans to update it to work in the latest WordPress?
Yeah, not working for me in 2.8 either — I fill in all of the relavant info in my widget admin area, and the second I navigate away from it, the widget is out of my sidebar and back in the inactive pool…
A shame too, since this was such a nice idea — any chance we can figure out what’s going on?
Hi,
Your plugin is starting to drive me crazy, I just can’t find the link where I can set my “images links” in the dashboard… I don’t know if it’s a bug but I need to change one of the links I made like 1 year ago and can’t find the “simple image link” panel.
HELP!
@JB – Can you install the Developer plugin (http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-developer-assistant/) and once activiated:
Select the Developer Options
Scroll down to find widget_simpleimagelink
Select “Show Serialized Data”
Select all the text shown
E-mail this to me at mad at blog-well dot com
This will allow me to see what the saved data is.
I have 5 blogs all upgraded from 2.7 to 2.8.4, and all run the plugin successfully.
So I am suspecting it is data related, in that an earlier version of the plugin saves data in a way which causes the latest version grief.
I found it after 2hrs looking for it. It’s in widget administration. Dang you should say it.
doesn’t work with 2.8.4
you put and after you upload the page the widget disappear!
Thank you so much, compliments!
bye
Ok! I’m a forth user that took the plugin from one of the three that downloaded from here. I don’t know what to do.
Please help!
Thank you in advance
Works fine with me 2.8 !
Thanks, good plug!
[...] BlogWell’s Simple Image Link Widget [...]
Is There a way I can display 3 icons across in a row for my FB, Twitter, and Vimeo buttons? Would love to do this!
What am I doing wrong? I’m a new WordPress user just building my blog. I just installed simple-image-link, activated it, put it in my sidebar, filled in all the blanks, including the full URL of the image, saved it. The alt text shows up on my blog, but the image does not.
Any suggestions?
hey there, love the idea of your widget, something exactly like I was looking for. One problem. If I ask it to omit the title, it screws up the display and does not show anything below it. If the title is there, it looks great, but I do not want the images to be in the boxes. How do i provide an invisible wrapper around it when the title is not shown?
Super-Duper site! I am loving it!! Will come back again – taking your feeds too now, Thanks.
I’m Out!
cheers buddy – I was just typing out some html in a notepad not really knowing what i was doing – there is literally a plugin for everything thats y WP rocks + yourself cheers
Image is fine on IE but is all stretched out vertically in Chrome browser.
Any suggestions?