16 Oct 2008

Wordpress Plugin – Slayer’s Custom Widgets v 1.0

Custom Widgets v1.2 is out! Please head over to the Official Release post.

If you are running Custom Widgets v1.0 it is highly recommended you upgrade it to v1.2

This plugin will make your widgetized sidebars so flexible that you will almost think that your running a more advanced CMS system and not Wordpress.

With Wordpress if you add a widget to the sidebar it is visible on every page. NOT ANYMORE!

This plugin enables the usage of different widgets in different sections, categories, posts,pages, and so on. For example you will be able to have ads related to gaming in the Gaming category and in the same place in the Kids category you will be able to have ads related to Toys for example.

Mark of WeblogToolsCollection suggested that i make a more expanded introduction, for you to get a better idea of what the plugin actually does.

Basically you can add a selected widget ONLY to the page you want to. Below you will find a few live examples, sit tight we’ll get to that. Because in writing it’s a bit hard to explain i’ve made a video for you guys:

Here are some practical examples:

Look at the sidebar widgets on Page #1

Now take a look at Page #2

1. Requirements

The same old requirements:

1.1 Wordpress 2.2 and above
1.2 Administrator account
1.3 Ftp acces to “wp-content/plugins” directory for upload

2. Options Panel

Just as any usual plugin Custom Widgets also has an options panel and once you’ve activated the plugin you will be able to see it even if you’re half blind.

Great, now you activated the plugin, went to Slayer’s Custom Widgets section but see no widgets. By this time you probably feel confused. Don’t be. In order to use custom widgets you need to add some widgets to your sidebar from the good old Widgets Page (Design -> Widgets).

Simply Add the widgets to the sidebar and save the changes.

Now that you got some widgets added to your sidebar head over to Slayer’s Custom Widgets section where you will notice that the widgets you added to the sidebar are now visible.

Those which have the blue color weren’t added to any pages/posts/tags/categories. Those which are red were already added to a section(this was implemented in order to make a difference between widgets in use and  widgets not modded by my plugin.

Now, if you click one of the widgets you will be taken to a management page where you can select where you want your widget to appear: on a selected Post, Page, Category, or Tag.

If you made it this far there isn’t much to do, except to define where you want your widget to appear by using the Edit links.

On the tags section if you have many tags the load time may be a bit large, but it’s worth to wait. By tags i mean tags pages( example:http://www.thaslayer.com/tag/design/ ).

Donate to Development

If you find this plugin useful and understand that a lot of time was spent in its development and lots of nerves were killed feel free to donate a few bucks which will fund further releases.

3. Download Slayer’s Custom Widgets v 1.0

Slayer’s Custom Widgets v1.2 (Primary Download link)

Slayer’s Custom Widgets v 1.0 (Primary Download link)

4. Installation Instructions

4.1 upload the slayer_Custom_Widgets directory to wp-content/plugins
4.2 activate the plugin (dashboard -> plugins -> find “Slayer’s Custom Widgets” -> click the activate button
4.3 head over to the usual Widgets section (wp-admin/widgets.php) and add some items to your sidebar
4.4 Now go to Slayer’s Custom Widgets section and select the widget you want to customize.
4.5 Add the desired widgets to the desired pages.
4.6 You’re all done!

If you want to show some love feel free to comment or to blog about the plugin :)

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slayer

Skilled web designer, with an in-depth knowledge of web 2.0 and latest industry standards
This entry was posted on Thursday, October 16th, 2008 at 7:30 pm and is filed under General Wordpress. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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User Comments

  • Cathy - 17 Oct 2008 7PM

    thanks for share.. i like it

  • absolon - 22 Oct 2008 7PM

    I’ve read whole post and I’m amazed. It seems to be one of most powerful plugin for Wordpress. I’m going to test it soon. Thank you for great share.

  • JTPratt's Blogging Mistakes - 24 Oct 2008 3PM

    I love this plugin and I have two suggestions. First install “subscribe to comments” right away, I won’t remember to come back to this page and check for responses ( I have bad ADD, lol ).

    Second, based on the functionality you provided in this plugin – I wonder if you would be interested in creating another (very needed) plugin. One that would allow bloggers to create custom tag and category pages “from the wp dashboard” without having to create the obligatory tag-slug.php and cat-id.php pages by hand and manually upload them to the theme directory. It would of course be an added feature of already existing category and tag management pages, probably just a “create and edit template” button. Are you interested in this challenge?

    Please send me email and let me know…

  • ZuperZed - 24 Oct 2008 7PM

    I love the effort you guys put into making these awesome plugins…

    This question might sound a bit rude (it’s not meant to be) but how is this different from the Widget Logic plugin?

    Don’t get me wrong here, I just want to know if and why I should use your plugin instead of WL?

    Keep up the good work!

  • absolon - 24 Oct 2008 11PM

    Hi again!
    After small tests I have to report one issue. Remove from category doesn’t work. I’ve clicked on particular category, confirmed but nothing happen.
    I’ve tested on 2.6.3 Wordpress.

    By the way. How can I add display widget on homepage? On if I got “display All” widget is visible on main site. For example I want display in 2 categories + main site only.

  • slayer - 25 Oct 2008 5AM

    This question might sound a bit rude (it’s not meant to be) but how is this different from the Widget Logic plugin?

    Don’t get me wrong here, I just want to know if and why I should use your plugin instead of WL?

    It’s not rude, questions are always good. Before making the overall concept i did some searches looking for similar plugins, but i couldn’t find any , and the plugin was born.

    The basic difference between the widget logic plugin and Custom widgets is that as you saw from the screenshots its more easy to use, and setting the widgets is just one click away, and much more organized and flexible.

    After small tests I have to report one issue. Remove from category doesn’t work. I’ve clicked on particular category, confirmed but nothing happen.
    I’ve tested on 2.6.3 Wordpress.

    Great find absolon!
    We’ll get the issue fixed along with some other minor issues till Monday

    By the way. How can I add display widget on homepage? On if I got “display All” widget is visible on main site. For example I want display in 2 categories + main site only.

    In v 1.0 this isn’t available, in version 1.1 which will be released Monday or Tuesday this feature will also be available. Thanks for the suggestion!

  • fromtheold - 25 Oct 2008 1PM

    Great plugin. Thanks :)

  • Crawford Harris - 25 Oct 2008 5PM

    I installed the plugin. I activated it. I then clicked on the setting button. It went directly to the 404 page. I cannot see anything I might have done incorrectly.

  • ZuperZed - 25 Oct 2008 6PM
    This question might sound a bit rude (it’s not meant to be) but how is this different from the Widget Logic plugin?
    Don’t get me wrong here, I just want to know if and why I should use your plugin instead of WL?

    It’s not rude, questions are always good. Before making the overall concept i did some searches looking for similar plugins, but i couldn’t find any , and the plugin was born.
    The basic difference between the widget logic plugin and Custom widgets is that as you saw from the screenshots its more easy to use, and setting the widgets is just one click away, and much more organized and flexible.

    Okay, thanks for reply!
    I’ll give it a shot…

  • Jossi - 27 Oct 2008 4PM

    I am running WP 2.6.2 and getting this error during activation:

    Parse error: parse error, unexpected T_STRING, expecting T_OLD_FUNCTION or T_FUNCTION or T_VAR or ‘}’ in /html/blog/wp-content/plugins/slayer_custom_widgets/slayer_Custom_Widgets.php on line 34

    ????

  • slayer - 27 Oct 2008 5PM

    I am running WP 2.6.2 and getting this error during activation:

    Parse error: parse error, unexpected T_STRING, expecting T_OLD_FUNCTION or T_FUNCTION or T_VAR or ‘}’ in /html/blog/wp-content/plugins/slayer_custom_widgets/slayer_Custom_Widgets.php on line 34

    ????

    Your running php 4 thats why your getting the error, if someone can provide a subdomain with 10 megs of ftp on a server with php 4 i would really appreciate it, because than the plugin would be made compatible with both php 4.x and 5.x

    If someone wants to help out, simply post a comment here, or use the contact form, or send me a mail directly to tom@thaslayer.com

    Thanks

  • slayer - 28 Oct 2008 6AM

    If someone wants to help out, simply post a comment here, or use the contact form, or send me a mail directly to tom@thaslayer.com

    Thanks

    Nevermind that, i found a host with php 4.4.2

  • Jossi - 29 Oct 2008 4PM

    Is it possible to tell the plugin to show a specific widget on the home page only?

  • slayer - 29 Oct 2008 5PM

    Unfortunately no in this version, but in the next that feature will be also available

    cheers,
    Tom

    Is it possible to tell the plugin to show a specific widget on the home page only?

  • Adrian - 30 Oct 2008 5PM

    Hey, I was hoping to display a widget on posts within a certain category. Selecting that category displays it in single posts as wanted but also the category post dump. I am building up a directory and the widget of concern is displaying custom fields with unique values for each post – but when this widget is shown for the category display, it shows values that are only relevant to the first post in the loop.

  • jpcookj - 01 Nov 2008 5AM

    Thank you very much for the plugin.
    I am going to try to see if it will solve my problems.

  • David North - 02 Nov 2008 2AM

    If you specify all the selected widgets to appear on page then there are none for the home page and random widgets appear on the home page.

    I would be great to be able to specify the widgets for the home page.

    thanks for a great plugin.

  • slayer - 02 Nov 2008 5AM

    @ David – custom widgets v 1.2 is finished. I’ve sent it to Jeff for some extra testing. As soon as he gets back to me i’ll release v 1.2 with the requested features

    cheers,
    Tom

  • David North - 02 Nov 2008 6PM

    Thanks, I am looking forward to the release.

  • Colin Sutton - 06 Nov 2008 3PM

    I think this plugin could be very useful on the site I am building. I have installed the plugin and set up three widgets. I have about 15 pages on the website so far and initally want to display a widget on all but one of the pages. But in the Custom Widget Text Pages I have a list of only the first 10 pages (which I can select from and know that the plugin is working fine) – when I click on the Older Entries link at the bottom of the page it doesn’t show me my remaining pages and so I can’t control them using the plugin.
    Is there a general problem here is it just on my site?
    thanks
    Col

  • slayer - 06 Nov 2008 3PM

    @ Col

    the older entries button/link has nothing to do with Custom Widgets, also could you specify more precisely what you mean by:

    when I click on the Older Entries link at the bottom of the page it doesn’t show me my remaining pages and so I can’t control them using the plugin.

    cheers,
    Tom

  • Colin Sutton - 06 Nov 2008 4PM

    Hi Tom

    Thanks for the quick reply – now I know the Older Entries link is nothing to do with your widget.
    What happens is this:
    I get the Custom Widgets page and click on a text widget in Sidebar 1
    get the Custom Widgets text page and click on pages (Edit)
    get the Custom Widgets Text pages screen and have 10 of my 15 pages available with checkboxes (showing under the Page title section on the right).
    I can add selected pages from these 10
    the trouble is I can’t see a way of getting to my remaining 5 pages!
    It’s probably obvious but I just can’t see it

    Col

  • slayer - 06 Nov 2008 4PM

    Oh! You should have specified that your talking about that older entries link. We’ll get the issue fixed in a few

    Thanks for the heads up!

    cheers,
    Tom

  • Tori - 07 Nov 2008 4PM

    Hi, this plugin is going to solve all my problems :) Just waiting for the new release with the options for homepage display of widgets. Any idea when it will be ready?

    Thanks for all the work!

  • slayer - 07 Nov 2008 6PM

    @ Tori

    i can’t give you an exact date but it will be any day now

    cheers,
    Tom

  • Edward de Leau - 08 Nov 2008 1AM

    This could be handy form my TAG pages, Im going to try it, thanks.

  • slayer - 08 Nov 2008 1AM

    Custom Widgets v1.2 is OUT! Please check out the Official Release Post

  • laihiu - 24 Nov 2008 4PM

    this plugin saved me so much trouble :) :)

    i no longer have to write those lengthy php conditionals to make things work for my sidebar(s).

    way to go!!!!

  • Faisal Khan - 25 Mar 2009 6PM

    Can’t you do the same with dynamic sidebars?

    Assigning widgets to the sidebars?

  • Romel - 05 Apr 2009 1PM

    Thank you….. It is so useful for me.

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