What does it do?

The main purpose of this plugin is to help you monetize your blog, in a smart way i mean. Ad Integration is an all-in-one ad managing platform which lets you create, manage and assign ads to your posts and sidebar as widgets (new feature).

Just as at Custom Widgets 2.0 the management and options panels were tuned up to fit the WordPress 2.7 design, and along with the tune-up we removed useless elements which used up the space. By this way everything got more organized and cleaner.

Assign Ads as sidebar widgets

Did i mention that you can now add your ads as sidebar widgets? I think i did, but eh here’s a quick in-depth look:

After setting the ad location as Sidebar Widget the plugin will automatically create a widget which you will be able to add to your widgetized sidebar from the good old widgets page. And there you have it, you can manage the ads from your sidebar also

How do i use it?

After you’ve installed and activated the plugin a stand alone meu item will appear right below the main menu. This provides quick access to the Custom Widgets management section.

Main Management panel

There are 3 main segments in the management panel: The ads display box, The Options box and the Donation box.

The Ads display box will show all the Ads you’ve setup. Those ads which are written in light grey aren’t public, and those which are written in black are live and running.

The Options box is meant to give you more flexibility and it allows you to define a custom css for the ads and even add html code to appear before or after the ad. The max ad count per page defines  the maximum number of  ads that should appear in the same time on a page.(category pages, tag pages, etc).

Adding a new Ad

Things can’t get simpler than this! Adding a new ad takes just seconds(after a bit of practice of course) and you will easily realize that Ad Integration is a very powerful ad management plugin and it will save you a lot of time and earn you a lot of money(hopefully).

To distingush one ad from an other give a title to your ad(will be visible only to you via the management panel) and insert the html code. The exciting new feature in this release is thge much requested show in sidebar option which if delected will create a widget that will addable to your sidebar from the widget managemenet section.

If you choose to inser the ad into posts you can choose it’s location and it’s alignment. The final step of the new ad setup is the publish function where you can select to publish the ad or not.

Editing An Ad

You can easily edit an ad by clicking the Edit button in the right part of your ad management panel. This will take you to a page where you can edit your ad: rename it,change the code and it contains all the settings which were present on the Add new ad page + EXTRAS.

The extras consist in two handy features:

1) You can choose wether to load the ad automatically or manually. Loading the ad manually means that you will have to inser the generated code() into your post for the ad to show up.
2) By default after adding a new ad it will be automatically activated. You can deactivate it by selecting the No tickbox and saving the changes.

Download Ad Integration 2.0

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Click here to start TS Ad Integration v2.0 download

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Installation

***To upgrade from Ad Integration 1.0 to v2.0 simply overwrite the old files with the new ones.

1) Download the .zip file to your computer and log into your wordpress admin panel.

2) In your admin panel head over to the plugins section and select the Add new segment. Browse to the custom widgets.zip file and click the Install button. WordPress will unzip the plugin and install it for you after which press the Activate Plugin button.

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Support us by donating

We work our asses off to release new plugins and themes for free. Working for free isn’t very motivating as you might know. If you wish to make a small contribution(you will be redirected to a paypal secure page) feel free to use the widget below.Once the donation meter fills up we will release a new theme and a new exciting plugin!

The most significant change you will notice will be the overall design of the Custom widgets options pannel.  We’ve updated the old WordPress 2.6 styled design to suit the new and sleek design of WordPress 2.7. Along with the new design we’ve fixed several compatibility bugs and implemented two much requested features: Widget name display, and more organized management. Click image below for preview.

Your text widgets will now have their title displayed in the widget management section, and finding posts you want to assign a specific widget to just got a lot easier. We got a suggestion from mufasa in which he suggested we add scroll bars to all the widget categories.

As you can see on the management preview we did implement his suggestion to the widgets that are assigned.

I talked to mbogdan and he suggested we don’t implement this feature for posts and tags, because displaying 1000+ posts at a time would put a huge load on the server and database, so to make everything simpler we added pagination to almost all sections.

All  posts/tags/pages, etc are organized alphabetically and by this way using the pagination you will easily find the post or item you want to assign a widget to. Cool huh? Also lets not forget mentioning that using the master tick box you can select multiple posts at once. Click image below for preview.

Basically the bottom line is that you will find the new version of custom widgets more flexible and more simple to use. Even a newbie wordpress user can manage it!

Download Custom Widgets 2.0

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Click here to start TS Custom widgets v2.0 download

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Installation & Usage

***To upgrade from CW 1.2 to v2.0 simply overwrite the old files with the new ones.

1) Download the .zip file to your computer and log into your wordpress admin panel.

2) In your admin panel head over to the plugins section and select the Add new segment. Browse to the custom widgets.zip file and click the Install button. WordPress will unzip the plugin and install it for you.

3) Click the Activate Plugin link, after which you will notice the TS Custom Widgets segment in the bottom of the menu. Clicking it will take you to the management panel.

4) Before you can assign  “custom widget” you will have to head over to the good ‘ol widgets section in  the Apperance section and add or create new widgets. Once you’re done head over to TS Custom widgets section and assign your widget(s) to the desired sections.

5) That’s it, repeat the second part of step 4 with all the widgets you wish to turn into “custom widgets”

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Blog about Custom Widgets

You are more then welcome to write blog post about custom widgets in which you may share your opinion and personal point of view about the plugin. To ensure that we also read it please use the following trackback link in your post:

Support us by donating

We work our asses off to release new plugins and themes for free. Working for free isn’t very motivating as you might know. If you wish to make a small contribution(you will be redirected to a paypal secure page) feel free to use the widget below.Once the donation meter fills up we will release a new theme and a new exciting plugin!

Me and mbogdan(he’s betng4u and yes yes he finally bought himself a domain, suggested by me of course ) decided to take a challenge and release 10 goodies every day for the next 10 days, it will be hard, but hopefully we’ll manage it next to college and other projects.

Here’s what we’ve prepared for you:

The order of the releases might change without prior notice, we’ll try our best to keep the order though.

Custom Widgets v 2.0 – fully upgraded to flawlessly work with WordPress 2.7 and packed with all the requested features including naming for the text widgets and the possibility to assign widgets to static pages set as homepage(can’t guarantee anything!)

Ad integration v2.0 – The release of the first version of this ad-management plugin was in august last year. We decided to upgrade it to 2.0 and to make it fully compatible with the wp 2.7 legacy along with some very very nice tweaks.

Post Quote v1.0 – This will be a brand new plugin, something you’ve never seen before! Basically you will be able to include as many posts you want to refer to in your current post. A bar will be shown which will be expandable. After expansion the post you referred to will be grabbed(ajax baby!) and displayed. The best thing is that we already started working on this. Sweet huh?

Siggie 1.0 – TS Siggie will generate an image which will contain your blog title, the latest post and 3 statistics(for example: total posts, comments and tags). The image will auto-update and by this way you will be able to show off your blog stats in your signature on forums you use.

Folio – The theme is already done, we need to make a few revisions on it. It’s a theme specially made for freelancers to showcase their work. It features ajax sliding for recent work, custom lightbox, automatic thumbnail generation and a very very sleek look. The best thing is that its load time is lightning fast! Ehh what the hell, you can preview it at http://mbogdan.com/playground/wp1/?p=29

Comment Ranks – This plugin will make your blog readers want to comment even more. Basically as the number of their comments will rise they will gain rewards like different color name, rel=”nofollow” removal from links and many other features.

7. All of the old themes will be updated to be fully compatible with WordPress 2.7 legacy.

Clouds theme - this will be a fast loadingsleek looking theme. It will have a right sidebar and the main colors will be grey/light brown/white.

Royale theme - a magazine alike theme packed with lots of amazing features and loaded with ajax features. Fluid width, featured posts, featured post switch and many many other features(curreently the index page has to be done, the comments page is ready)

Install scripts without fantastico - ebook will contain all the tutorials i’ve published on my blog. This way anyone will be able to access it anywhere and share the tutorials with friends.

Contribute to new theme & plugin releases

We work our asses off to release new plugins and themes for free. Working for free isn’t very motivating as you might know. If you wish to make a small contribution(you will be redirected to a paypal secure page) please use the widget below(greatly appreciated).

Thanks!

As you know the default string to preview a theme is index.php?wptheme=theme name . That isn’t very cool is it? TBH its damn ugly and long. Doesn’t testsite.com/theme name/ sound a lot better? I bet it does!

If you take a look at my blog’s free themes seciton you will notice that every live demo url is a static. I have lots of customers to manage, and spending my time on setting up 10 tets blogs would be dumb, so i did this trick and i can show every customer his theme and wait for feedback. Its a lot cleaner than the dynamic url.

Here’s how to rewrite the dynamic url to a static one:

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^([A-Za-z0-9]+)/?$ index.php?wptheme=$1

Copy this code and paste it into your .htaccess file right in front of # BEGIN WordPress.

Other info:

• This tweak was tested and is fully functional if you do it as instructed.
• It does not affect in any way your permalink structure.

Have fun & enjoy!

Before i uploaded my plugin to wordpress.org i wrote a propper readme.txt file which is compatible with wordpress.org’s standards and included it in the package. I also updated the zip file located on my download server, so regardless of where you download it from you will get the same package.

Currently i do not have any plans for a next release of custom widgets, but most probably i will have to once wp 2.7 is released(to make it fully comptible).

If your using custom widgets please Rate my plugin Thanks!

1. Short Intro

Yeah baby! You guys have been waiting for this pluign for quite a long time( well not that long, considering that only 3 weeks passed from custom widgets v1.0). Since the initial release of Custom Widgets lots and lots of features were requested and bugs were reported.

We(betng4u and me – me with the ideas, him with the coding) tried to handle each an every request, unfortunately there were a few which we couldn’t fulfill(for example: you can’t install Custom Widgets using Pluginstaller, and we didn’t work on making it compatible with Pluginstaller because we considered that the normal installation process is easy as pie).

FOR SCREENSHOTS VISIT THE CUSTOM WIDGETS v1.0 RELEASE POST (click)

2. Official Presentation Video

I know, i know the speech in the video is a bit monoton, but i’m wasted after 6 hours of college and 2 hours of workout.

Click here to watch on Youtube

3. New features

Before starting work on Custom widgets v1.2 i’ve made a log of feature requests that i considered clever and bug reports(scroll down if you want to skip this):

######Custom Widgets v 1.2 - changes to be made######
#####################################################

1) Fix category bug: custom widget added to a category
can't be removed

2*) Pluginstaller isn't installing custom widgets
(http://henning.imaginemore.de/pluginstaller/)
*IDEA REMOVED, with manual instalation it works just fine*

3) Add to widget addition page an authors section for user
to assign a widget to a specified author's posts only.

4) Conditional Tags simplification(use tickboxes):
- http://codex.wordpress.org/Conditional_Tags

a) "Show Widget Only on Homepage" - is_home()

Tooltip: "The widget is shown only on your blog's homepage
using the is_home() tag"

b) "Show Widget on all posts" - is_single()

Tooltip: "The widget is shown when any post is displayed
using the is_single() tag"

c) "Show Widget only on Sticky posts"  - is_sticky()

Tooltip: "The widget is shown when any stickied page is
displayed using the is_sticky() tag"

d) "Show Widget on Posts/pages Where commenting is open"
- comments_open()

Tooltip: "The widget is shown when any post is displayed
where commenting is possible using the comments_open() tag"

e) "Show widget on all pages" - is_page()

Tooltip: "The widget is shown when any page is displayed
using the is_page() tag"

f) "Show widget on all Categories" - is_category()

Tooltip: "The widget is shown when any category is displayed
using the is_category() tag"

g) "Show widget on all Tag Pages" - is_tag()

Tooltip: "The widget is shown when any Tag page is displayed
using the is_tag() tag"

h) "Show widget on all Archive pages" - is_archive()

Tooltip: "The widget is shown when any type of Archive page
is displayed using the is_archive() tag"

i) "Show widget on Search results" - is_search()

Tooltip: "The widget is shown on all search results using the
is_search() tag"

j) "Show widget on the 404 - Not found Error Page" -is_404()

Tooltip: "The widget is shown on the 404 - Not found error
page using the is_404() tag"

k) "Show Widget for admin previews" - is_preview()

Tooltip: "The widget is shown when a single post being
displayed is viewed in Draft mode using the is_preview() tag

-----------------------------------------------------
Each setting will have a "?" next to them which on hover
will show a balloon with a tip of what the setting does with
the tag name linked to the description at wordpress codex.

5) Compatibility with both php 4 and php 5. - DONE

6) Latest donors implementation. - Coming in v 1.3

######Custom Widgets v 1.2 - major bug reports######
####################################################

A) Works fine on fresh install,at upgrade nothing happens
- ISSUE FIXED

B) Extended features list looks like a zoo, needs
restructuring and more style | - ISSUE FIXED

C) Plugin description is missleading, needs a new one
- ISSUE FIXED (Used Jeff's description)

D) When an advanced feature is selected at a widget
the widget color doesn't turn red | - ISSUE FIXED

E) Make a WordPress.org compatible readme | - ISSUE FIXED

F) Last minute issues: Users could only see a max number of 10
categories/tags/posts/pages on the options page | - ISSUE FIXED

######Custom Widgets v 1.2 - ETA - Launch######
###############################################

Friday, Oct 31 , 2008 (Halloween), Spooky!
Jeff's feedback arrived on Nov 2, Release on Nov 6 or 8.

4. Download Slayer’s Custom Widgets v 1.2

CUSTOM WIDGETS V 2.0 IS OUT! (3rd March 2009) Click here for release notes and download.

5. Installation Instructions

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

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

If you don’t want to do either of the above you can always suggest new features and report bugs.

- The usage of Gravatar, and the importance of NOT changing your gravatar frequently.

- Overview of the new WordPress 2.7 dashboard, and an admin backend overview.

- Chat about Akismet and how well it fights spam.

- Alex King’s Carrington Theme framework.

- Plugins of the week and WordPress Job of the week.

Within the Plugins of the week discussion Jeff chose Custom Widgets as this week’s plugin. Besides talking about it they gave me some suggestions regarding the plugin, the most important one being the possibility to assign widgets to specified templates(e.g:single.php):

“I’d like to see the ability to control which widgets appear on which template such as configuring a widget to appear on pages that utilize the single.php template while hiding that same widget from other templates.”

Well Jeff, this is a great idea and you can be sure that it will be implemented in Custom Widgets v 1.2, along with some other handy features.

ZuperZed asked me what’s the difference between Custom Widgets and Widget Logic plugin which can assign widgets to templates(what Jeff suggested), but its damn hard to use.

The user has to define the desired template, and know the Conditional Tags used by WordPress,

Here are some examples:

is\_home() || is\_category('baked-goods')
or
$x=(1==1)?true:false; return ( !is_home() && $x);

The issue with that is that not even an above-average wordpress user can use the plugin with ease. Slayer’s Custom Widgets Plugin is very simple to use with absolutely no coding knowledge and I still got lots of emails from people asking me how to use it.

This feature WILL be added to Custom Widgets v1.2 which will be out sooner than you expect it

Press play to listen to the discussion about Custom Widgets

As it’s name ” Ad integration” says the plugin’s purpose is to integrate ads in your posts. It doesn’t mattter what ad you want to ad: Google Adsense, Bidvertiser, or just a link to an image this plugin can handle it, and just as every plugin it comes with a cool options panel.

1. 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

The options panel is divided in 3 main sections:Ad Integration, Donate to Development and Options section.

1. Ad integration section

To add a new ad  click the “Add Ad” button which will take you to the add code page. There define the ad’s title and code. Advanced users: You can define your own HTML wrapper.

“Ad name” = the name of your ad. It isn’t publicly displayed anywhere, it’s just so that you can make the difference between the many ads you will ad.

“Ad HTML Code” = your ad’s html code(Google Adsense for example)

“Use default HTML wrapper” = the plugin can conjure the ad in a custom HTML wrapper which can be defiened in the options section. If you don’t know what this is just leave it on default.

“Max repeat count on same page” = This value defines how many times the ads will appear on the same page. The higher teh value the more times the ads will appear on the page(for example a category page)

“Ad position” = The position of the ad inside the post.

If you want to edit your ad click the edit button next to your ad. This will take you to an advanced options page where you have even more flexibility.

“Load type” = The way the ad is insterted in the posts.

- auto: the ad will be automatically inserted in the posts
- manual: the ad will be shown only in the posts in which you add”<!–slayer_Ad_Integration_[AD_ID]–>” .There’s no limit on the number of ads  you insert in a post.

“Public” = you can set an ad to be visible by your readers or not. This feature is great if you don’t want to delete an ad for later usage.

To delete an ad locate in the “Ads” Section your ad and click the “Delete” button. Remember that this is undoable.

2. Donate to Development

Although i doubt that someone will donate i added a donation section(saw it at many plugins), who knows maybe Bill will start blogging, use my plugin and perhaps make a $ 1mill donation(lol).

3. Options

“Default HTML Before Ad” & “Default HTML After Ad” define the wrapper for each ad. You can owerwrite this by selecting “Default html wrapper”

“Custom CSS” gives you the possibility to add css styling to your ad.

“Max ad count per page“  This value defines how many times the ads will appear on the same page. The higher teh value the more times the ads will appear on the page(for example a category page). This doesn’t apply to manual ad inclusion.

3. Download Slayer’s Ad Integration v 1.0

Slayer’s Ad Integration v 1.0 (Primary Download link)

Slayer’s Ad Integration v 1.0 (Mirror link)

Slayer’s Ad Integration v 1.0 for PHP 4.X

4. Installation Instructions

2.1 upload the slayer_Ad_Integration directory to wp-content/plugins
2.2 activate the plugin (dashboard -> plugins -> find “Ad Integration” -> click the activate button
2.3 eat a cookie
2.4 drink some milk
2.5 you are done, now go enjoy the plugin.

Thanks again for using my plugin Feedback and suggestions are as usual warmly welcome!

About 1 years ago i was making themes and i was auctioning them and selling them for 10-30$/piece, well for more than 8 months i didn’t auction any theme, i only do custom designs now, and to be honest i enjoy the most designing wordpress themes.

I am a designer, not a coder, you can thank all the coding wonders in styleicious and chameleon themes to BETng4U, i just came up with the ideas, he made all the magic work!

They say that you can either be a designer or a coder. I completely approve this sentence. You can’t design and code in the same quality. You either give 100% at designing, either you give 100% at coding.

Jumping to the point of this blog post, what i want to talk to you guys about today are 2 plugins that are mandatory for a wordpress theme designer/developer.

1) Theme Switcher

Theme Switcher allows your readers to switch among installed themes.

If a customer asks you to show previous live demos of your work this plugin is ideal, you don’t need to setup wordpress 100 times, you just add the following code to the sidebar and he will be able to preview all the uploaded themes(make sure you add the code to all the theme’s sidebarm):

<li>Themes:
<?php wp_theme_switcher(); ?>
</li>

The default link is: index.php?wptheme=themename

with a little mod_rewrite magic you can rewrite that URL to yourtestsite.com/themename/

2) Theme Test Drive

Theme Test Drive WordPress plugin allows you to safely test drive any theme on your blog as administrator, while visitors still use the default one. It happens completely transparently and they will not even notice you run a different theme for yourself. Best part is you can even set the testing theme options (if it has them) in the Admin panel while you are testing the theme.

This plugin is great for testing if you aren’t working on localhost, by using this theme as stated above your testsite’s visitor won’t even notice that you are working on a theme. Cool isn’t it?

You can easily enable/disable it from your admin panel in the Presentation tab. There you will be able to select the theme you want to testdrive.

I’m sure both of these plugins will serve you the best on your journey to perfect your wordpress theme developing skills