WordPress plug-in which adds a sidebar widget containing a subtle list of all your social homes as linked favicons. 

Version 3.x of Social Homes allows you to add any link you want, so the list of available services is endless. Just add a name and a URL and Social Homes will fetch the page’s favicon and create the link automatically!

  • If you leave the name field as the default ‘Service Name’, Social Homes will fetch the page’s title and use that as a name.
  • If you uncheck the box next to a service, that service will not appear on your blog but the data will stay saved in the database.
  • To delete an entry, clear out the address box and save your changes.

social-homes-control

You can download the plug-in here.

89 Responses to “Social Homes”


  1. 1 Chris

    Any chance that you’ll be adding Picasa?

  2. 2 ez

    Yep, it’s next on the list. Now that I’ve got the comments working, if anyone wants any other services, please let me know here.

  3. 3 Nicki

    I just updated to WP 2.7. I cannot find the SH admin page now. :(

  4. 4 ez

    Hey Nicki,
    I just upgraded to 2.7 as well and the admin page is still in the same place: Appearance > Widgets > Current Widgets (on the right) > Social Homes.
    Is it not there in your installation?

  5. 5 CCB

    Great plugin. Is there anyway I can tweak it so that the Facebook icon links to my Facebook ‘public figures’ page instead of my profile?

  6. 6 ez

    Not easily at the moment, but a future version will have the option of building a service from scratch and then it should be doable.

  7. 7 Lisa Clarke

    How about adding Ravelry? The user pages are of the format http://www.ravelry.com/people/userid

    Thanks for the nice plugin!

  8. 8 Brendan Moon

    I like it!

    Request addition of Plaxo and IM services like Windows Live & AIM.

  9. 9 Josh

    This plugin has a lot of promise. I look forward to playing with it once you’ve implemented the new “building a service from scratch” functionality you talked about – some of the assigned links don’t go to the exact page I’d like and it’d be great to be able to tweak the URL. Thanks for your work!

  10. 10 Logan Thompson

    I added AIM to my blog by adding this to the social-homes.php global services list. Great plugin!

    $services[] = array(
    ’serv’ =>’AIM’,
    ‘link1′=>’aim:GoIM?screenname=’,
    ‘link2′=>”,
    ‘icon’ =>’http://www.aim.com/favicon.ico’
    );

  11. 11 Kevin

    Hey there, first of all, thanks for the great plugin! Just have one question though, I just now noticed that in Internet Explorer, I can not view the icon graphic for the Last.fm icon [http://silentlycrashing.net/blog/repository/social-homes/] BUT, when I load the URI for that image, it displays in IE. Any ideas on how to fix that? Thanks so much!

  12. 12 Kevin

    Sorry this is the correct URI for the Last.fm icon:

    http://cdn.last.fm/flatness/favicon.2.ico

    thanks again :)

  13. 13 James

    Hey, I love this. Any chance you’ll be adding Imeem to it?

  14. 14 ez

    Hey Kevin,
    I had noticed that bug and changed it a few weeks ago. For some reason, Wordpress isn’t indicating that there is a new version of Social Homes available on the plugins page, but you can download the latest version (currently 2.5) on this page.

  15. 15 Mathias

    Hi Kevin,

    great plugin, thanks for sharing. Added the Swedish service http://www.pusha.se. Here’s the code, and great work on the plugin code BTW, exemplary in how easy it was to add a service.

    $services[] = array(
    ’serv’ =>’Pusha’,
    ‘link1′=>’http://www.pusha.se/medlemmar/’,
    ‘link2′=>”,
    ‘icon’ =>’http://www.pusha.se/favicon.ico’
    );

  16. 16 ez

    Hey! Not sure who Kevin is but thanks! About the clean code, Pietro Versari is the one to thank for that, it was quite a mess before he fixed it up :)

  17. 17 BeyondRandom

    Hello there! First things first, thanks for the great plugin as it is exactly what I was looking for! I was wondering how to manually call the plugin in a sidebar rather then using the actual widget? Thanks alot.

  18. 18 James

    Social homes is a fantastic plug-in. Thanks for your effort.

    I’ve added an array for Backtype to my installation if anyone’s interested:

    $services[] = array(
    ’serv’ =>’Backtype’,
    ‘link1′=>’http://www.backtype.com/’,
    ‘link2′=>”,
    ‘icon’ =>’http://www.backtype.com/favicon.ico’
    );

    I’d add Backtype to the next version, if I were you – it’s a fantastic service.

  19. 19 John

    Awesome plug-in, just what I was looking for!!! Building a service from scratch would be awesome, as I’d like to add my Jamendo profile…

    Great work, super big thanks!

  20. 20 Loulou

    Hi, I lovee your plugin :) ) So cute and usefull at the same time :) !!!

    Would it be possible later, to perhaps add some more links as “second life”, “imvu.com” or even international social links as “yoolink.fr” or misterwong.fr pleaseeee? :) :x :x:x

    Thanks for all in all cases :) :x:x:x

    Loulou

  21. 21 David

    Love this plug-in, it looks great for my personal site. Obviously there are many services that you could add, but I would like to put in a request for blip.fm – alternatively, a method for us to insert our own services manually would work great too.

    Keep up the great work, and thank you!

  22. 22 Ahmed

    Nice plugin ez, i also live in montreal, was just wondering how i could insert the code manually into my sidebar because if i enable the widget it removes everything else in my side bar thanks!

  23. 23 ez

    Hi Ahmed,
    Not too sure how to do that, but the plugin should play nicely with the sidebar. I’ve got it enabled along with other widgets and I never heard of anyone else with that problem. Are you sure it’s not another plugin causing the problem?

  24. 24 ez

    Thanks David,
    About inserting custom services, I’m planning on doing it but I’m quite busy these days so if anyone wants to give it a shot, go for it!

  25. 25 Brett

    Thanks! Great Plugin

  26. 26 Wendy Merritt

    This plugin looks great. However, I really need the facebook to link to my facebook page not my profile. I have seen others ask for it…but thought I would put in my vote too.

    As long as I am wishing, can you include an RSS link too? Most blogs include their RSS feed icon with their social icons.

    Very nice tool.

    Blessings,
    Wendy

  27. 27 Jackie Tulos

    What a great plugin. I plan on putting it right on my site. With all the extra code people have shared I will be able to add any favicon to my site.
    Thanks

    follow me on http://twitter.com/jackietulos

  28. 28 ez

    For everyone who wanted a social network that was not in the list, give version 3.0 a try. You can now add any service you want by typing in the full URL. I’ve tested it pretty thoroughly, but please let me know if you encounter any problems.

  29. 29 mike young

    I just upgraded to v3.0 and it seems to have erased all my previous settings. Kinda bummed. Wished there was some kinda disclaimer for that. I appreciate your work but at least as someone who’s social networks were in the default (probably the majority of users)…the unexpected change seemed unwarranted.

  30. 30 ez

    Hi Mike,
    Sorry about that! The new version actually uses a new settings file and I was meaning to mention it in the readme but it totally slipped my mind. I will add it in today.
    As for your old settings, if you revert to version 2.5 of the plugin, you can still have access to them, so you could do that and copy them over.
    Sorry for the troubles…

  31. 31 mike young

    Thanks for the follow up. I appreciate it. I managed to get everything going ok but there was a little bit of shock right off the bat that I’d have to go to all my social sites and find the appropriate URLs.

    On an related note to this one, I’ve added tumblr to the list and an icon doesn’t show up.

    Thanks again for all your work.

  32. 32 Jack McIntyre

    Hi,

    I like the plugin (see it on jackmcintyre.net – in the sidebar, under “where I am”.

    I made a small code change to list items with service name. Code is as follows:

    // print the link

    echo ‘  ’.$serv.’‘;

    Could this be added as an option? I’m not upgrading the plugin due to this change at the moment.

    Keep up the good work!

  33. 33 Jack McIntyre

    WP broke my comment sorry :)

    [code]
    // print the link
    echo '  '.$serv.'';
    [/code]

  34. 34 Jack McIntyre

    broken again :(

    please email me if you would like the code.

    Jack

  35. 35 christian

    Not all Favicons working. Particulary Youtube,Myspace,Delicious. Not sure if I’m doing something wrong.

  36. 36 baron

    Works great, thank you

  37. 37 gerardo

    All favicons I’ve tested are working on Firefox, but not on IE7 and IE8. One example of this is the flickr favicon. It would be cool if we could give explicitly a Image url or something for those cases. Thanks for the good work :) .

    Cheers

  38. 38 Coach Jeff

    I have added Tumblr to the list and the link works fine, but the icon will not display in Firefox, Chrome, Safari, or IE 7 (flckr also doesn’t work in IE). Any ideas?

    Thanks for making social network linking easier

  39. 39 ez

    About not working in IE, I am aware of it. I started looking at a fix but haven’t really found one yet. You can try reverting to version 2.5 until I find the problem.
    About Tumblr not working for any of them, I just tried and it works fine for me. Can you give me more info (your Wordpress URL, your Tumblr URL, and the version of Social Homes you are using)?

  40. 40 George

    Great plugin, thanks for creating this. If I could be so forward to ask to have the possibility to have it made as a multi widget ie be able to have 7 or 8 of the widgets. Its great for one author, but what happens when your site has a couple or more authors??
    Thanks in advance
    George

  41. 41 Ivan

    Hi,

    Could it be posible to use the list outside of the sidebar? ie via a php function on a template/header or anything else? btw, this plugin is really cool :)

    Regards.

  42. 42 Jeff clark
  43. 43 Blake

    Great work!
    Can the links open in a new page?

  44. 44 mike young

    I am still having the same problem with tumbler also that I noted a while back. As with Jeff the link works fine but the icon doesn’t display on my WP blog. I’m using 3.2 also. When I look in the plugin edit page there is no code for tumblr as there is for the other services.

  45. 45 Matic

    Hi ez, Thanks for the great plugin!! I’m not sure if I missed this on all the comments but…how to you change or remove the blue border around the favicons. I’ve searched other sites and they say to edit the social_bar.php. If this is the case, what folder would the file be in. Thanks again!!

  46. 46 JC

    Great plugin buddy!! Thanks!!

  47. 47 ez

    Hey Matic,
    That blue border is just the default style for images. The icons are in a div which is of the “socialhomes” class, so adding something like the following to your stylesheet should solve the problem:

    .socialhomes {
      border: none;
    }

    Cheers!
    -Elie

  48. 48 Nick Kizirnis

    I upgraded to WordPress 2.7 and can no longer find the admin to Social Homes. I can find the listing for it, and I can edit and deactivate, but there’s no admin now. Help?

  49. 49 ez

    The admin area should be on the widgets settings page: http//www.yourblogaddress.com/wp-admin/widgets.php. Once you add Social Homes to a sidebar, a link to edit it should be created under the “Current Widgets” header.

  50. 50 Ella

    This rocks. You rock. Thank you for sharing and helping people out. I send you a virtual beer :)

  51. 51 kalanna

    Wondering if this awesome widget can be moved onto a page and out of the sidebar? Thanks!

  52. 52 Stephen Paul Weber

    You already have rel=”external”, it would be awesome it you added rel=”me”… so it would look like this:

    rel=”external me”

  53. 53 Stephen Paul Weber

    I’ve written a patch for you :)

    http://pastie.org/511836

  54. 54 ez

    Hey Stephen,
    Awesome, thanks, I’ll make sure to add that to the next release!

  55. 55 Valentin

    Hi !
    I used this plugin in an older version and I made an update to the last one, loosing something very important for me.
    I can’t change anymore the icon adress to another one, icons made by myself.
    Any idea I could do that again ?
    Thanks in advance.

  56. 56 ez

    Hi Valentin,
    I think the best thing for you is to revert back to an older version of the plugin. The idea behind Social Homes is to make adding services as simple as possible, which is why it now fetches the icons automatically from the sites you plug into it. Good news for you is that your old settings are not lost, so you should be able to just replace the PHP file and everything should work!
    Cheers,
    -Elie

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