1 widget in many corrals?
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how would I have 1 widget in many corrals? I want to avoid cloning widgets simply to be able to place them in multiple places…
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Hi thanp73,
I’m intrigued by this idea. How would you expect such a feature to work in the UI? Would you expect to be able to duplicate a widget within the Wrangler (sortable drag and drop interface)? Or do you have something else in mind?
Thanks,
JonathanJon- The ideal widget plugin to me would do the following.
1) as yours does now, making a custom post type into a widget is a great idea. essential too to show or hide the widget title!
2)Allow you to group any widget into groups or sets (you call them corrals)
3) any widget may be in one or many sets (yours does not do this)
4) sets may be ordered drag and drop- eg, set A displays widgets 1,2,3 in that order, but set B displays widgets 3,25,7 in that order. (not possible now that I’m aware of)
4) each page can display one or many sets of widgets, or can pull individual widgets and display, and re-order (not possible that I’m aware of)
5) same granular functionality for posts + other page types
6) arrange different sets of widgets for different categories or by tag.I currently am able to accomplish this only thru dynamic widgets. I also use a tag plugin to tag my pages, and assign a tag that triggers a rule in dynamic widgets to show or hide a given widget.
I can’t use any type of widget ‘set’ even though wrangler and my theme allow it, because there seems to be no way for 1 widget to appear in more than 1 set or corral… so it defeats the purpose of pre-arranged sets if you need to create lots of copies of widgets!
thanks for your work and contributions to wordpress!
thanp73-
Thanks for that list, I think we can figure this out.
1- check
2- check
3- 1 (widgets) to many (corrals)
4 & 5- Widget Wrangler allows for custom widgets to be set on any page, post or custom post_type (beneath the editor). You can choose which post_types can control their own widgets on the Widget Wrangler >> Settings page. Let me know if you’re having trouble with this and the Widget Wrangler metabox doesn’t appear when editing a page or post. If you’ve found this, then the issue may concern either the 1 to many problem, or with pre-saved sets of widgets? “Presets” handle the pre-saved groups of widgets, but require a license to create your own and don’t address the 1-to-many problem.
6- The Pro version of widget wrangler can do this.Your description of using dynamic widgets was helpful. It seems like this might come down to a few issues.
1 to many – widgets to corrals
This could be approached a few ways. One thing you could do is to make a widget that contains nothing but other widget’s short codes. This could work as a group of widgets, and you could make as many as you’d like. Admittedly this is not super user-friendly, but if you use the slug shortcodes it would be a little better.
I just did a test and it mostly worked. I was missing the interior widget titles, but I’m certain I know what is causing this, and I’ll fix it in the next release.
I’ll consider adding duplication of widget functionality within the wrangler if it makes sense.
Rules based display of widgets
Widget Wrangler has always been focused on per-page granularity of widget management (bottom-up). A rules based system like dynamic widgets is very top-down, in that it you have to consider the big-picture of your website with every choice you make. That’s not to say Widget Wrangler couldn’t use a rules system to be a better widget management system, I’ve thought about it plenty.
My current thinking is that the best place for it is as a part of Presets, that way you could essentially control your whole websites widgets through presets. This would undoubtedly be a Pro feature.
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I’m interested if the above 1-to-many idea would work for you if I were to fix the widget-title bug. Also, if you have other thoughts or questions about adding a rules system to Widget Wrangler.
Thanks,
Jonathanyou hit the nail on the head- 1 to many. 1 widget to many corrals, so you don’t end up duplicating widgets just to get them to appear in different places. that’s a pain , especially with form codes, when it comes to updating.
I didnt; think of using a widget’s shortcode inside another widget as a way of creating custom sets and 1 to many…that really is ingenious and probably would be the answer-
You are right about top down vs bottom up management…. I guess i think top down, so I ended up dumping all widgets in the main, always on sidebar, and turning them off by default, unless turned on by exception, and used a plugin that allowed me to add tags to pages, then used tags on those pages to identify if a given widget should be on or off. A training page? turn the training menu in the widget on on pages with training page tag…. and so on. very much top down, and if any of these kluged together elements goes away, I’m hosed…
Hi thanp73,
Widget shortcodes in other widgets should be fixed in the newest release (2.1). Let me know if you have any issues with this.
Additionally, there is a feature that allows you to hide specific widgets from the sortable Wrangler. If you go the route of using widget shortcodes in other widgets… as some sort of meta-super-widget, then you could hide all the individual widgets from the Wrangler to make your post/page UI more in line with what you’re hoping to achieve.
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