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Adding a vCard download to your Wordpress site
March 16th, 2008
Filed under Web design
I wanted to add a link to download a vCard from my custom sidebar.php file, but wasn’t able to stop Wordpress from serving it as a .txt file instead. Instead I used this solution to add my contact details in semantic html and also serve up a dynamically generated vCard file.
Microformats are all the rage right now – these standardised bits of html are being used to semantically mark up common bits of data such as contact details. Here’s how I created the link:
- Create an hCard using this form
- Copy and paste the code into a page on your site. This can be styled any way you need with CSS (or hidden using a negative text-indent property).
- Use technorati’s Contact Feed service to generate a vCard from this embedded information. Add the following url as a standard link:
http://feeds.technorati.com/contacts/http://yoururl.com/page. Remember to use the page where the hCard html is located.
You can see the finished download link on the Virtual Worlds page.
Tagged as: hcard, microformats, technorati, vcard, wordpress
Jann Mirchandani commented on August 7th, 2008 at 5:54 pm
Great trick! Thanks for posting. Got the job done in minutes!
Zhou Wenhan commented on September 27th, 2008 at 9:26 am
Hi Zoe,
I am just checking in to see if you would find a new web service that
I have created useful. The service is called Shrtcard.com and it
provides you a way to create a vCard that is also secure and hidden.
ShrtCards is a simple contact page that you maintain. When you pass
out business cards with the ShrtCard code, the recievers can just go
online and enter http://www.ShrtCard/XXXXX to see and download your contact
details and vCard.
ShrtCard is not searchable nor indexable so only people with the
ShrtCard Code can see your contact.
Could you tell me if you would find this useful? Right now if you sign
up, you will get a 6 character code for your Shrtcard ID. If you would
like, I can change it for you so that it is more readable. i.e.
shrtcard.com/ZoeJes. I plan to monetize this as a premium feature in the future.
–
Zhou Wenhan
Download My Contacts @ shrtcard.com/wenhan