Comments on: Widgets?!

By: Leanne

Leanne — Sat, 25 Aug 2007 23:54:23 +0000

Just because a theme is widget ready doesn’t mean you have to utilize widgets. Widgets are drag & drop text boxes basically, in the admin panel you can rearrange and add new ones and it just is cleaner than going in and messing with the HTML in the sidebar template.

HOWEVER.

If you know what you’re doing in a template, and there are no widgets used, it defaults to whatever is in the sidebar.

By: Sean P. Aune

Sean P. Aune — Sat, 25 Aug 2007 19:55:25 +0000

Well, heh, I just throw them on, go look at the live set, and if I don’t like them, I pop them out *laugh*. It’s so fast, and easy, to do, your readers probably won’t even noticing you do it.

Depending on your host, you may also be able to set up a second WP install to use as a test bed. Put it some place like joscafe.com/test and then you can play with a dummy copy to experiment with. I actually have multiple dummy installs to experiment on all my different sites. Let’s you work out the bugs without bothering your visitors.

By: Jo

Jo — Sat, 25 Aug 2007 18:40:57 +0000

I’m beginning to realize that — but here’s my problem. I am not set up to “create” these Widgets and preview them prior to going live — at least not yet anyway.

But I’m learning — just hard headed!

By: Sean P. Aune

Sean P. Aune — Sat, 25 Aug 2007 18:35:43 +0000

Jo -

No clue where you got the idea where they give you no control, but that couldn’t be further from the case.

For things you want to enter by hand there are “Text Widgets” where you can enter any old thing you want. For the other’s, they are pre-built, but you can make adjustments to them just like a plugin.

EVERYTHING in my sidebars are widgets if you want any idea what all they can do.