WordPress Widgets
We’re doing something a little different this Theme Friday, instead of adding new themes (which we’ve done twice in the past week) we’ve added some functionality to the bulk of the themes on our service, updating dozens.
We’re very proud to introduce WordPress Widgets. Basically what we’ve done is broken down the sidebars in themes into discrete blocks of goodness, and created an interface for you to add, delete, and rearrange them by simply dragging and dropping. It’s as easy as falling off a blog.
The widgets are basic right now, things like search, categories, pages, etc, but we’re going to be adding more based on your requests and we’re opening up an API for anyone to create their own widgets. (It’s as writing a single function and wrapping it in a WordPress plugin.)
What we integrate at this point is going to be entirely driven by you, so be sure to use the feedback link to let us know what you want. You’re free to also blog about what you want or start a thread in the forums, but right now it’s easiest for us to tabulate things sent in via the feedback form in the top-right of your admin section.
In the meantime, if you see a “Sidebar Editor” menu item under the Presentation tab, that means your active theme has sidebar options. (It’s not live for every theme, so try a few different ones out.) Play around with making your blog a little more personal, and rest assured we have more on the way. 
As a final note, this functionality was very much inspired by the updated Hemingway we included a few days ago, so props to Kyle Neath on a great idea and good initial implementation. (Not to mention how awesome Hemingway is.) Our very own Andy came up with the widget framework and adapted most of the current themes.
Posted: Saturday, February 25th, 2006 at 3:21 am. Filed in New Features, Themes, Widgets, WordPress, WordPress.com.
Feb 25th at 4:10 am
Uhh, I tried to drag and drop in Firefox 1.5 and nothing happened.
Feb 25th at 4:20 am
Awesome! This is the first step to customization on WordPress.com!
Feb 25th at 4:30 am
I love the Hemmingway, it’s easy and cool. However I hope that you also add “recent comments” on the widgets. Thanks.
Feb 25th at 4:36 am
Making Widgets
Feb 25th at 4:39 am
Fixed the drag and drop error, there was a deploy problem with some of the Javascript.
Feb 25th at 4:49 am
I think it would be awesome to have a text box widget like in Regulus. It could give a spot to actually describe the blog.
Feb 25th at 6:31 am
This is cool! It would be supercool if we can customize the sidebar per template (index, single, page, …).
Feb 25th at 6:47 am
Matt,
WOW! Fantastic! This allowed me to add ‘Pages’ to the Quentin theam, the one thing I needed to make it work for me. I would like to see a “recent posts” widget and am looking forward to trying to create my own.
Thank You,
Scott
Feb 25th at 7:30 am
Great to see you’ve added that functionality Matt. This is more than I ever hoped for
Feb 25th at 8:03 am
that’s pretty cool!!
Matt, is this gonna be a part of WPMU as well or will it remain exclusive to WordPress.com?
Feb 25th at 8:47 am
Dynamic Sidebar is a WPMU plugin at this stage. It will either be adapted as a WP plugin or a core feature if it survives the brutal proving grounds of WordPress.com.
Feb 25th at 8:57 am
Great feature! Thank you so much
Feb 25th at 9:51 am
Can add “Recent Entries” to the widgets functions???
Feb 25th at 1:16 pm
I’d like to echo K and ask for a ‘recent comments’ widget – that would be great.
Feb 25th at 2:54 pm
Oooh these are all really useful and they make the Contempt layout just that much more awesome! Thanks guys!
Feb 25th at 5:35 pm
Well, darn it, when I try this with Quentin, the calendar disappears. Should that be happening? I got to have my calendar so I’ll stay with Quentin and admire the widgets from afar. Would it be possible to make a calendar a sidebar option in all the themes? That would be awesome.
Feb 25th at 10:38 pm
awesome !!!
yes, first step to customization
longing for “recent comments” widget too
thanks
Feb 25th at 10:55 pm
Perfect (though it’s extremely slow in Opera Weekly Builds – Opera problem, of course).
I suggest one click to drop, not double click.
Feb 25th at 10:56 pm
Oh, and of course, Recent Comments
Feb 26th at 12:19 am
Now this is what I’m talking about!
This is why WordPress is lightyears ahead of the “other guys”!
Feb 26th at 12:38 am
This is so neat! Thank you. Im having the same problem as judyk – I love Quentin, but when I try to add “pages” the calander disappears. Is there any way we can keep it? In any case, very nice work!
Feb 26th at 1:25 am
Thanks, great feature.
Feb 26th at 1:42 am
Whoa – I just changed my theme and tried to insert a search function widget. I lost my entire sidebar. Damn!
Feb 26th at 2:06 am
THANK YOU!!!!1!!!
i’m so glad white as milk is customizable, but what about simpla? will you add the ability to all the current themes? that would be RAD
Feb 26th at 5:26 am
AAhh nice job atlast some customizations but I would also like recent posts widget also It works in WP-Andreas09 theme
Feb 26th at 10:38 am
nice work !!
thanx a lot
It would be nice to have “Latest Posts” and “Recent Comments” widgets too !!
Feb 26th at 11:05 am
Quentin’s calendar is back as a widget!
Feb 26th at 12:14 pm
please make this into a standard feature on wordpress (regular download wordpress) or atleast provide the code to make it work, cause that would be awesome!
Feb 26th at 6:57 pm
Slightly unrelated, but as you mentioned hemingway, I’m gonna put it up here.
Could we have the “META” thingy operational for all themes? I love the hemingway theme, but I have to remember the login-page’s addy everytime I need to login!
Feb 26th at 11:21 pm
Thanks, Andy, but I cannot locate the calendar widget for Quentin.
Feb 27th at 9:32 am
This is nice feature, which I really missed when started blogging. At the moment, with the current theme that I am using, is not that much required.
But as in added feature …. this is great.
Is it possible somehow to have a widget where we can add extra HTML codes so that we can have added feedbacks/pings for servives such as blog clicker, technocrati … hope u understand what I mean.
All in all, thanks.
Feb 27th at 1:55 pm
On Hemmingway Theme:
Sukhi, I’ve noticed that too. No “Log-in” (META links) included on Hemmingway template. I had to put it myself manually somewhere in my LINK page. I want to point out that the RSS for entries & comments doesn’t give a correct feeds. Also, I’ve noticed, I can’t use javascripts, iframes & video codes in our posts, is that restricted?
Overall, Hemmingway is a nice theme, you can choose white or black and it looks different from a normal theme.
Feb 27th at 4:04 pm
can we get a version of quentin where we can adjust fonts to a lower size; or a version of connections with the sidebar in place?
Feb 27th at 4:06 pm
it would also be nice to get an option to alter Hemmingway, such that you get a page structure like:
post categories calendar
post archives about
post
Feb 28th at 3:10 am
Can you add the option of a calendar to each theme?
Feb 28th at 9:44 am
- “recent comments” for Hemingway would be much appreciated.
- also….for Hemingway, How can we adjust the three bottom sidebars to 2 sidebars (i.e. one big sidebar and one smaller sidebar at the bottom)?
Feb 28th at 3:36 pm
1) Recent comments.
2) latest posts.
3) Flickr Zeitgeist.
Mar 1st at 9:05 am
I tried the widgets on any number of themes and I end up with huge headings all over the page. The only thing that looks as it should is the content.
Mar 1st at 2:11 pm
I think it would be cool to have a widget that creates a list of the ten or so most recent links found in the body text of the blog.
Mar 3rd at 4:32 pm
When are the other layouts getting this opportunity?
Mar 4th at 12:29 am
I’d also like to see widget support added to Simpla.
Mar 4th at 1:15 am
an adsense widget would be great
Mar 4th at 3:00 pm
Just wanted to say thank you for the continued improvements you are making!
Mar 4th at 8:31 pm
This is a great move towards additional customization! I like it.
I wouldn’t mind seeing a widgets for:
1.) contextual advertising (Yahoo Publisher Network, Google Adsense, etc.)
2.) coComments
3.) Flickr photos
4.) Recent entries
5.) a blog tagcloud
I look forward to the additional functionality.
Mar 5th at 6:39 pm
Wow, this is awesome!
I would like to see this implemented in the wordpress core eventually, so that it can be used like the regular template tags.
Great Work!
ps: is this official?
Mar 10th at 4:09 pm
Only one thing.
Why always post the full post, but not just a part of it, like the Hemmingway? I’m sure that lot of the bloggers have the same problem. The blog just doesn’t look nice… just boring.
Or maybe the problem is just in me…
Can’t you do anything about this… please?
Mar 12th at 2:03 am
are there any plans to add the widgets functionality to the downloadable standard wordpress package? if yes, when it’d be available?
Mar 12th at 7:58 pm
Ohh man hope this comes in the next release of wordpress.org
Mar 12th at 11:43 pm
We’re going to make it a plugin for WordPress.
Mar 18th at 2:55 pm
This is truly awesome. Can’t wait for the plugin to be rleased – will it work for wpmu?
Mar 21st at 8:11 pm
Awesome and many thanks.
Mar 23rd at 2:35 pm
Any plan on when this might see the light of day?
Mar 29th at 6:38 pm
Definitely interested in seeing this as a wordpress plugin!
Good work.
Oct 31st at 1:34 am
For those that like valid CSS the widgets.php file’s widget_rss_head function should be edited
function widget_rss_head() {
?>
a.rsswidget{display:inline !important;}a.rsswidget img{background: #FFA500;color: #FFFFFF;}
Oct 5th at 5:39 pm
COOL!:lol: