By Jeffro on May 16, 2013
WordPress.com users now have a feature available to them that should have been in the core of WordPress a long time ago. They call it, Widget Visibility. Users can either hide or show widgets based on category, author, tag, date, or page. This covers the most common use cases without having a need to use conditional tags.
The interface is surprisingly simple. In fact, I prefer what WordPress.com is using versus Widget Logic which requires me to know conditional tags. I’m wondering how did WordPress.com get this feature before stand-alone WordPress? When I asked this question on Twitter, Ian Stewart responded with:
@wptavern I’d look for it here http://jetpack.me/ :)
This makes sense and in fact would allow the Jetpack team to get valuable feedback before ever considering putting it into core. If you can’t wait that long, try out the Widget Context plugin. Widget Context provides a similar interface with a few more bells and whistles that the WordPress.com variety doesn’t have.
Posted in WordPress | Tagged context, control, widgets |
By Jeffro on May 1, 2012
The latest release of one of my favorite plugins, Widget Logic, now has the option to import and export options. The options are saved to a text file which contains all of the conditional logic.
Conditional Logic Saved Within A Text file
Despite using this particular plugin for a long time, it never really occurred to me how nice it would be to have such a feature. This really comes in handy for those times when you want to reformat your website and instead of remembering the conditional logic for each widget, you simply import the text file and the configuration is taken care of.
While I didn’t dedicate much time to it, there is an additional enhancement that comes with Version .52 of the plugin. You can now select when the logic code runs. Here is a screenshot that should help clarify what it does.
Oh, and if you get lost trying to find out where the new features are located, you’ll find them at the bottom of your Widget configuration page.
Posted in Plugins | Tagged export, import, widgets
By Jeffro on December 7, 2011
It’s an idea proposed by Ipstenu that might just work. The gist of her suggestion is to manage widgets similar to how we manage menus. Instead of all that fancy drag and drop stuff, we switch to a check box approach where users can check which widgets they want to have added to a particular sidebar. Judging by the comments left on that post, a number of people feel that her concept is a great idea and should be considered when the time to rework the widget management area arrives. Drag and drop was cool when it arrived but having 3-5 sidebars with 30 available widgets makes drag and drop not so cool anymore. ∞
Posted in WordPress | Tagged concepts, ideas, widgets |
By Jeffro on November 22, 2011
You know that annoying problem of when you switch to a theme and then switch back to the original, you lose your widget configuration? It looks like that problem has been solved but the WordPress team needs your help on deciding how long your widget configurations should be saved. Amongst the choices provided, I chose to go with Other. When thinking about it, I figure that if Widget configurations can be stored as revisions, then all of the other time periods need not apply. So far, Indefinitely is leading the way but if you use the revisions technique, that seems like indefinite to me just as long as you don’t reset or flush out the revisions. The comments following the poll make for interesting reading. ∞
Posted in WordPress | Tagged Polls, survey, Themes, widgets |
By Jeffro on October 25, 2011
I stumbled across this theme the other day called Tachyon by RocketTheme and noticed that is has 70 widget positions. That is insane. I can’t imagine how much of a burden or a nightmare it would be to manage something like that from the back-end of WordPress as just having 15 or so widgets can become cumbersome. This link will show you all of the various widget spots complete with there variations. Check out the following image which shows a blueprint of where all of the widget spots are located.
Posted in Themes | Tagged design, rockettheme, Themes, widgets |
By Jeffro on October 11, 2011
Back on August 25th, the guys over at Interconnect/it released a brand new plugin called Spots. If I had to describe this plugin in one sentence, I’d say it was a text widget on steroids.
There are quite a few things that make this plugin very cool to use. The first is that it uses a custom post type which means when you create a spot, you get access to the editor as if you were writing a post. You also get access to all the stuff that’s normally attached to a post with the exception of tags and categories. Because you get to use the normal editor, it’s very easy to add media to the spots that are created without using blocks of HTML as you normally would within a text widget.
After a spot is created, you can add it to any sidebar that’s built for widgets. However, you’re not limited to using spots in the sidebar only. In the Visual editor for writing posts, there is a Spots button which uses a shortcode to insert the spot into a post or page.
Shortcode Button That Inserts The Spots Shortcode
Developers can also take advantage of this plugin by using the built in functions. For example, instead of hard coding text into a widget within the footer of a theme, you could turn it into a spot which would enable the end user to customize that spot with whatever they want from the administration panel, not having to touch any code. By doing it this way, theme developers could probably get rid of a couple theme options for text areas or default widget areas.
Conclusion:
Spots is an awesome plugin by the crew over at Interconnect/it. People have been wanting WYSIWYG functionality in text widgets since the day they were introduced into WordPress. This plugin does that and so much more. If you’re looking for a replacement for the default text widget in WordPress that provides more flexibility, definitely give Spots a try.
Posted in Plugins | Tagged Plugins, review, spots, widgets
By Jeffro on September 12, 2011
Those of you who listened to episode 111 of WordPress Weekly or who have been reading this site for a long time realize that I’m on a quest to find a plugin that provides the right interface for making widgets flexible when it comes to configuring when and where they show up. To fulfill this task, I’ve been using Widget Logic but it doesn’t have any interface that allows users to choose where the widget shows up. Instead, it has a small box where you put in a conditional tag.
Today I came across a post by Sarah Gooding of WPMU.org (wonder if she listened to the show) showcasing the Flexible Widgets plugin by bechster. As the name implies, it’s supposed to provide additional display options for widgets to give them more display flexibility. After checking out Sarah’s screenshots and realizing the interface looks like something I’ve been thinking about, I decided to give it a try. Unfortunately, after installation I noticed two problems. The first is that if I have too many pages to fit in the box, the scroll bar for the Pages area disappears. I was able to scroll within that area by placing my mouse cursor in the box and using the mouse wheel but this is not how it’s supposed to work. It should look like the Categories area with a proper scroll bar. I’m using Firefox 3.6.22 by the way.
Scrollbar Is Missing For The Page Box
The second issue I encountered is that the additional display options do not show up for certain widgets. For example, here is what my YARPP widget looks like:
Non Flexible Widgets :(
It also doesn’t work for my KB Advanced RSS widget but it works just fine for all text widgets. If these two issues could be fixed and I can be somewhat guaranteed that the additional display options will work with all widgets, this would be a great plugin to recommend as I love the simple interface for choosing where the widgets will show up. For now, I’ll be going back to Widget Logic. It’s worth noting that the plugin author states: May conflict with themes or plugins which include custom widgets.
Posted in Plugins | Tagged Plugins, review, widgets |
By Jeffro on September 2, 2011
Kaspars Dambis of Konstruktors.com has publised his second version of a proposed user interface design for his popular Widget Context plugin. Widget Context is a plugin that provides users the opportunity to show or hide widgets. I’ve used Widget Context in the past but I’ve been quite happy with the performance and functionality of Widget Logic which relies on me knowing about Conditional Tags. Because of the conditional tags concept, it’s not the most user friendly plugin. However, I am very satisfied with how it works. By default, when a widget is enabled in WordPress, it’s displayed within the sidebar on every page that sidebar is loaded. After configuring a widget through Widget Logic to only show up on the front page via the conditional tag, it is then hidden on all other pages EXCEPT the frontpage. So in a way, I’m configuring where the plugin will display and be hidden at the same time.
Widget Context on the other hand has the ability to tell widgets where they are hidden and where they will be shown. Some may see this as a benefit as more flexibility, but I see it as another layer of complexity. The second edition of the proposed user interface for Widget Context is as follows:
You can also see a live demo of the UX proposal. I like the idea of being able to search for pages or posts to show or hide widgets during the configuration process. However, this version of the plugin implements rules that can have lower or higher power based on their vertical arrangement. While this provides more flexibility, I think it adds complexity. Since this type of functionality looks like it will never make it into the core of WordPress based on everyone that has told me “There’s a plugin for that” I’d like to share with Kaspars and anyone else that may be looking into this realm of WordPress functionality what I’d like to see so that we can have a GO TO plugin that everyone can use.
I’m thinking of a plugin that’s a cross between Widget Logic and Widget Context. This plugin should work on the premise that anytime a widget is added to a sidebar, it’s viewable across the entire site where that sidebar loads. UI is added to the widget screen so that I can easily search or choose from the various template files that make up my theme to decide where the widget will be displayed. By specifically configuring where the widget will be displayed, I’ve also configured where it will not be displayed. I’m not quite sure which user interface would work best for selecting more than one area where the widgets will be displayed, perhaps the check box method that already exists in Widget Context. This is about all I’d need to satisfy my needs. It’s simple, not many options and I think covers the basis for a lot of uses. Now, if Kaspars or users suggested that they wanted rules, or more complex ways of telling their widgets where to show up or hide, I would not complain about having an Advanced tab that showed additional options. But I definitely don’t want that clutter in view as part of the default configuration UI.
I’m not sure if I explained my vision very well but if you could, please take a look at the proposed changes and offer Kaspars some suggestions if you have any.
Posted in Plugins | Tagged context, interface, logic, widgets |
By Jeffro on June 14, 2010
A few weeks ago, there was a poll published on PollDaddy.com that asked the question, What do you call these draggable, expandable boxes in WP? For example, “The Publish _________.”. The choices were postbox, metabox, module, widget, area, container, box, or other. I think the poll question was not specific enough with regards to the question or at least, I was pretty confused.
Attached to the poll is a screenshot of the publishing box within the WordPress back-end. This publishing box is called a metabox as are the other boxes in the sidebar on the publishing page. So naturally, I voted for Metabox. However, in WordPress, there are terms used to describe these boxes depending upon where you are. On the front-end of the site, they are called widgets, in the back-end, they are called metaboxes. I think what the poll question should have asked was If you could change the name of widgets or metaboxes, what would it be? Then, I would have voted for Container, Module as I feel those two best represent common sense of their functions. You have a container that holds stuff. That stuff would be modules. Modules imply they can me moved around and are versatile. This can be understood without pointing someone to a Codex page.
On the flip side, it was interesting to see that 26% of the voters just call it Box while there was a 1% difference between Metabox, Module and Widget. I highly recommend reading the comments on that poll to get a feel for why people voted the way they did.
What did you vote and why?
Posted in News | Tagged modules, poll, widgets |
By Jeffro on September 7, 2009
Chris Coyier published a great technique on the Digging Into WordPress site that explains how to create editable regions instead of text areas that are baked into the theme. For instance, ever get a theme with a block that looks like a widget but it’s really just a div container in the sidebar.php file that you manually have to edit? I know I have, a number of times, wishing it were just a text widget I could easily edit. Thankfully, the child theme I’m using for WPTavern.com is chock full of Widget areas so it’s a simple matter of creating a text widget and assigning it somewhere.
Another tidbit worth noting here is that in the example, the specific widget has a unique id number which you can assign a class too and thus, style in CSS. So in essence, you could give each text widget its own style. It would add more CSS to the themes CSS file but it might result in some cool outcomes.
Posted in Themes | Tagged regions, sidebars, text, widgets |
