Thesis users enjoy the simplicity of a pre-formatted RSS and Email subscription widget.
Some Thesis requests have inquired as to creating additional “similar format” subscriptions, such as for Twitter.
Creating this is simple enough: we enter the Subscriptions widget, and paste the following code into the area reserved for “Describe your subscription options” – though this could also exist in a separate text widget if you prefer, it may require additional CSS formatting…
<ul><li class="sub_twit"><a href="http://www.twitter.com/doublemule"
target="_new" rel="nofollow"> Follow on Twitter</a></li></ul>
The only item of note is that your HREF will want to reference you, though if you wish to promote following the Mules on your site, fine by us…
A line of code is needed in your custom.css to create a sub_twit format that matches our new Twitter link to the CSS classes for the RSS and Email subscription options.
.thesis_widget_subscriptions .sub_twit a { padding-left: 20px; background: url('http://www.doublemule.com/
wp-content/themes/thesis/custom/images/twitter.gif') 0 50% no-repeat; }
The background URI should be your own of course, and can be relative rather than absolute – the 12×12 pixel “T” (for Twitter) image we created is what is being called here.
And that’s that, you should now have a Follow Me on Twitter widget that matches closely the RSS and email options.
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How do you “nofollow” the subscription feed link in the widget? I’ve tried to add a nofollow in the widget and can’t do it. No following the feed link is pretty important.
From Matt Cutts:
“The only place I deliberately add a nofollow is on the link to my feed, because it’s not super-helpful to have RSS/Atom feeds in web search results.”
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/pagerank-sculpting/
On an RSS feed link, top-right; like Matt Cutts, the Mules use Thesis, which is why our nofollow on the RSS feed there is a checkbox and a save button.
We also suffered a single do-follow link on the “in the sidebar” RSS subscription action, and only for reasons we shall keep to our own counsel at present. It could be “nofollowed” just as the Twitter follow-me was, with a tiny lunge of additional effort.
Twitter needs no authority from our site, and we do not wish to encourage SERP placement of Twitter above our site or competing online profiles (Mules cannot be bothered with Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace — barely Twitter — but we do know what you humans slouch around thinking about).
To create the nofollow for the Twitter “Follow me” widget, the herd added directly to the code insert. As a text widget, this was not difficult. For the pre-configured Thesis subscription options, into which Twitter does not factor, but email and RSS do, a nofollow is slightly more interesting to effect.
Thanks for dropping by — if you have further questions, send a “Twitter” (tweet?) or comment here to your heart’s desire.
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