WordPress Ideas » Tag: widgets - Recent Posts

WhitG on "A safer Widget screen (warnings when deleting widgets with data/settings)"

WhitG — Thu, 16 May 2013 15:17:33 +0000

Twice in the past week I've been bitten by the following scenario:

I go to the trouble of tailoring a widget and its content to deliver a particular type of information. The site's (tech-non-savvy) owner decides that they don't want to use this particular widget for now, so they (I'm sure the WP admins can see where this is going) drag it out of the active area and into the "Available Widgets" area, where it is deleted forever.

We WP veterans obviously know to drag that sort of widget to the "Inactive Widgets" window below so that it can easily be restored later, but rookies don't know that area exists, even if they had a reason to think that they should keep a widget around in the first place.

So my suggestion is to alleviate this problem, which could come in multiple forms:

1. Add an "are you sure" type of warning upon widget deletion that's armed by default (possibly to be turned off by admins in Settings).

2. Create a plugin that creates the above warning message.

3. Make sure that the text indicating the difference between the two widget storage areas is bold, clearly delineated.

My preference is for #1, and I'm surprised it doesn't exist already. Widgets are a heavily used, highly engineered feature of some WP sites, and the ease of accidentally destroying someone's work is just too high right now. Everything else in the WP environment is automatically backed up. If we can't have that, then we at least need to be warned before deleting potentially valuable content.

ahoereth on "Widgets and Sidebars should work like Menus"

ahoereth — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 06:49:47 +0000

I proposed a Google Summer of Code project addressing this problem. It does go a different way, but solves the same thing.

It is called "Widget Collections" and you can read the whole thing at my blog yrnxt.com/~121

Maybe, if you give some feedback and the project gets approved for GSOC, you can use this functionality by the end of October!

adnanmn on "Widgets and Sidebars should work like Menus"

adnanmn — Sat, 13 Apr 2013 18:43:07 +0000

This is a wonderful idea, I completely agree, because of the pain when you have to remember and remake the widgets in a new theme. This idea, if implemented saves this work. Especially very good for someone who keeps on changing themes. This is a functionality that will make WordPress more dynamic.

Tibor Paulsch on "Separate edit_widgets and edit_menus capabilities from edit_theme_options"

Tibor Paulsch — Sun, 07 Apr 2013 05:58:48 +0000

+100000..

I think this is a must have

lencw on "Separate edit_widgets and edit_menus capabilities from edit_theme_options"

lencw — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 22:46:08 +0000

Absolutely essential.

I fully support this requirement, for which there is no sensible or feasible workround.

Content management should be separate from design management to prevent the inevitable mess, especially in small businesses where people have multiple roles - and tend to fiddle.

I have recently started to use Wordpress as my main building tool for customer websites, migrating from an older system, and this issue alone is without doubt the most frustrating.

In fact early today I posted a feature suggestion on the forum saying about the same as this post. That was before I stumbled across this post

Ipstenu (Mika Epstein) on "Widgets and Sidebars should work like Menus"

Ipstenu (Mika Epstein) — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 03:26:02 +0000

We're working on Menus this round, and lessons learned from that should come back around to widgets.

You can follow along on posts here: http://make.wordpress.org/core/

derekjoseph on "Widgets and Sidebars should work like Menus"

derekjoseph — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 21:58:33 +0000

I agree with Jesse.. it would be much easier if we can work on side bars as we work on menus... but i think that widgets should work differently than side bars and menus ...

eagerbob on "Separate edit_widgets and edit_menus capabilities from edit_theme_options"

eagerbob — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 15:57:56 +0000

I agree that this is a good idea.
My clients do not have access to widgets, themes or plugins to keep things simple and to prevent them breaking the site.

But it would be handy if they could change the text in textwidgets etc.

al@videofeet.com on "Separate edit_widgets and edit_menus capabilities from edit_theme_options"

al@videofeet.com — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 15:05:15 +0000

Please!

Dieta Dukana on "Widgets and Sidebars should work like Menus"

Dieta Dukana — Sat, 26 Jan 2013 12:28:33 +0000

I just read your post @Jessie and you have some valid points but at the same time I think that it would be very confusing for the users if widget and sidebars would work exactly like menus. Something should definitely be done with widgets and you are definitely on to something here but your idea in my opinion should be modified a little.