1. WordPress Widgets Kathy E Gill 1 February 2011

2. What Are Widgets?  A “configurable code snippet" that makes it possible to modify function and appearance

3. Widgets & WordPress Themes  Not all themes are widget-capable  Themes vary in widget options, location

4. Single Widget Area

5. Multiple Widget Areas

6. Where Are Widgets?  Access the widgets page from the Appearance Menu in your Dashboard.

7. Default Appearance - Single

8. Default Appearance - Multi

9. Monotone: No Widgets Supported

10. Editing Appearance  Note: once you edit a widget area, the default widgets disappear  Recommendation: before editing, take a screenshot of your theme  Tip: if you don’t want anything to show up in a widget area, try adding a blank text widget.

11. Adding Widgets  To add a widget, drag from the Available or Inactive Widgets area on the left onto the Sidebar area on the right.  When you see a dashed line appear, you can drop the widget into place. Single widget area; image from WP.com

12. Multiple Widget Locations

13. Configuring Widgets  Each widget has configuration options. Click on the triangle on the right side of the widget to configure.  You’ll need to save only if you edit.

14. Ordering, Deleting Widgets  Change the order of the widgets by dragging and dropping them in the sidebar area.  Delete by dragging to the left or clicking the “delete” link on the configuration box.  Note: design change is immediate – no “save” required

15. Screencast

16. Important Widgets (1/5)  Archives Navigation. Provides access to old posts; a key characteristic of blog as a genre  Categories Navigation. Provides access to posts by topic; a key characteristic of blog as a genre

17. Important Widgets (2/5)  Links As Blogroll, Background. Provides insight into blog content, author; a key characteristic of blog as a genre  Tag Cloud Navigation, Background. Provides access to posts by keyword; requires reasonably large corpus to be useful.

18. Important Widgets (3/5)  Pages Navigation. Provides access to pages; essential if sidebar is primary navigation.  Category Cloud Navigation, Background. Provides alternative access to posts by category; requires reasonably large corpus to be useful.

19. Important Widgets (4/5)  Recent Posts Background. Highlights most recent posts; useful when “more” tag not employed.  Recent Comments Background. Highlights most recent comments; requires reasonably large corpus/frequent comments to be meaningful.

20. Important Widgets (5/5)  Text May be the most important widget; can hold text or HTML but no javascript.  RSS Links Provides access to post and comment RSS feed using orange button. Essential if there is no other RSS subscription link in the design.

21. Interesting Widgets (1/3)  Twitter Background. Displays tweets by handle.  Flickr Background. Displays photos from Flickr based on an RSS feed.  Delicious Background. Display Delicious links by handle.

22. Interesting Widgets (2/3)  Box.net Functionality. Share files with your readers.  Meebo Functionality. Enables private IM chat.  SocialVibe Functionality. Support a charity.

23. Interesting Widgets (3/3)  Blog Subscription Functionality. Enables email alert when there are new posts.  SocialVibe Functionality. Support a charity.

24. Widgets That Require Content  Search Useless unless there is a large corpus.  Top Clicks Useless unless there is a large corpus.  Top Posts and Pages Useless unless there is a large corpus.

25. WordPress Widgets  List and descriptions at WP.com: http://en.support.wordpress.com/t opic/widgets-sidebars/ http://en.support.wordpress.com/t opic/widgets-sidebars/  Even more widgets available for self-hosted WP accounts: http://codex.wordpress.org/WordP ress_Widgets http://codex.wordpress.org/WordP ress_Widgets

26. For Portfolio Sites  Consider adding links to Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter  You will use Text Box. We’ll do one of these on Thursday.

27. Widgets Are Not Plug-ins WP.com has no user- configurable plug-ins Widgets = content (more or less) Plug-Ins = functionality (usually are back-end, such as Akismet, statistics or Google analytics, but may provide short-code functionality or easy content sharing)

28. Credits  Kathy E Gill, @kegill  Creative Commons: share-and- share alike, non-commercial, attribution