Most WordPress themes in 2014 are widgitized where you go to “Appearance” >> “Widgets” and drag and drop various widgets on the left to your themes sidebar(s) on the right, creating a WordPress blog precisely how you want it. The simplest of WordPress themes have a single widget area: like a left sidebar where widgets can be dragged to and the 12 WordPress default widgets: Archives Widget Calendar Widget : HIGH SEO Damage Categories Widget Custom Menu Widget Meta Widget : LOW SEO Damage Pages Widget Recent Comments Widget : MEDIUM SEO Damage Recent Posts Widget RSS Widget Search Widget Tag Cloud Widget Text Widget The Stallion Responsive Theme includes no fewer than 21 additional custom WordPress widgets (Stallion also […]
Continue Reading Add Widgets to WordPress
WordPress Different Widgets on Different Pages
Hi David,
Is it possible to set adds in the sidebar which will show upon a specific page on the website?
Lets say I have 6 pages on my website, I set cat food add on the page’s sidebar which related to cat food, but that add only shows on that page of the site, but not on other pages. How can this be done?
Thank you for your help!
Gabor
WordPress Widget Display Plugin
Use the built in Widget Display Plugin under “Stallion >> Layout Options” enable the “Widget Display Plugin”, this adds new features to all multi-widgets (widgets that can be added more than once like Text Widgets) including disabling widgets on specific posts/pages.
After it’s enabled most widgets can be hidden or shown on specific posts, categories etc…
Go to the SEO Tutorial and scroll to just below the main content (below the author biobox) and you’ll see text links to all the SEO Tutorial articles, that’s a text widget with the links added manually and the display widget only showing the widget on the SEO Tutorial category. Go to any of the WPRobot articles or autoblog articles and on the left menu you’ll see an image ad to buy WPRobot (with a WPRobot Discount code), that’s a WordPress custom ad widget with the display widget only loading on articles related to autoblogging.
There’s also the Stallion Single Posts Widget, if you add that widget to a sidebar (under Appearance >> Widgets) whatever code you add on the edit Post/Page screen in the Stallion Single Posts Widget form at the bottom is loaded there. For posts you haven’t added anything on the edit screen, nothing is shown, ideal for one of bits of content you only want on one post.
This is good for when you want something specific on a lot of posts/pages, unique links or ads on a post by post basis. You can achieve the same with the Widget Display Plugin options, but if you wanted unique ads or something adding to 100 posts it would mean adding 100 widgets under Appearance >> Widgets which isn’t practical, with the Single Post widget you add the one widget and add the content on each posts edit screen.
I use the Stallion Single Posts Widget for quickly linking relevant posts together where I can’t be bothered looking for/adding relevant anchor text to add the links in the main content (contextual links are better, but more effort :-)).
David
WordPress Widget Display Plugin
How to Change Widget Titles
Hi David,
First of all, hope you’re feeling better.
Do you know how I can change the widget titles in Stallion? I’m running a non-English website and would really like if I could change for example “Recent Articles” to another language.
But as Darren said, health comes first.
Pål
Changing WordPress WIdget Titles
Going to guess you don’t understand too much about widgets.
Under “Appearance” >> “Widgets” you have a lot of Widget Areas that correspond to different parts of the Stallion theme.
If you’ve never been on this page and added widgets to those areas (you drag and drop widgets into those areas) you are probably using some of the default WordPress and/or the default Stallion widgets (WordPress and Stallion show some by default). You might find for example if you ran the TwentyTwelve theme before Stallion you have a WordPress default Recent Articles widget on the Left Sidebar, this is an editable widget. Click the little down arrow at the right side on the widget and you’ll see a Title area, if it’s blank it defaults to “Recent Articles” when viewed by your visitors. Add whatever you want in that Title box.
If the right and left sidebar widget areas are empty Stallion by default adds a few basic widgets to those two areas so it’s not blank, this is not the best setup, add at least one widget to the left and one widget to the right and the defaults are gone so you can addonly the widgets you want.
Stallion has a lot of custom widgets, some are editable and some aren’t, for some of the non-editable Stallion widgets you can change the widget titles on the Stallion Language option page. there are some language defaults on the Stallion Language options page for a quick setup.
Regarding the Recent Articles widget, there’s a better Stallion one. Add a “Stallion SEO Posts” widget to one of your sidebars and give it a relevant title and select Recent Posts. With this widget you can show a thumbnail image and an excerpt of the post. This is a multi-widget which means you can add it multiple times, on this site for example I’m using one on the right sidebar title: Stallion Popular Articles which is set to Popular Posts and another one in the footer widget title: Latest Stallion Articles which is set to Recent Posts, both of these widgets I’ve set the thumbnail to 50px by 50px.
David
Changing WordPress WIdget Titles
Widget Context Plugin
Can you build this into the theme instead of having to use the plugin?
wordpress.org/plugins/widget-context
Widget Display Plugin
There’s already a Widget Display Plugin built into Stallion under
Stallion Layout Options : Widget Display Plugin
David
WordPress Fixed Widget
Hello David,
could you have me how I can fix the widget although i scrolls to the footer, the widget is still visible? If i don’t fix it, the sidebar widget will disappear when I scroll into the bottom.
I hope you add this point for your next version too :)
WordPress Broken Widget
I don’t know which widget you are referring to, example URL?
David
Fixed Facebook Widget
For example, Facebook.com. You can see at the right-side, where ads are showing. When you scroll down, the right side will fix and still go along your action to the bottom of the page. I also want such action for my right/left widget.
Thank you so much.
Q2W3 Fixed Widget (Sticky Widget) WordPress Plugin
There’s WordPress Plugins that add that functionality, for example the Q2W3 Fixed Widget (Sticky Widget) WordPress Plugin https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/q2w3-fixed-widget
Interesting feature having fixed or sticky widgets.
David
Plugins Slow Down WordPress
Hi, David. I am so appreciated your knowledge in webdesign and also thank your advice. In fact, plugins are good to add whatever feature we need but they lower down the run of web blogs. Therefore, i don’t like much adding plugin.
Your theme is best, I think because you build the feature inside without using much additional plugins. These help website to run fast.
So, if you know code how to put such feature, please help me a bit.
Thank you,
Ratanak
Plugins Slow Down WordPress
WordPress Plugin vs WordPress Theme
I started writing a comment, but it developed into an article so added it at WordPress Features – A WordPress Plugin or A WordPress Theme?.
The webpage linked above is where Stallion Responsive will be supported, have to build a new site as the features have changed so much between the Stallion SEO Theme 7.* and Stallion Responsive Theme 8.0. Have to create all new theme tutorials etc… for Stallion Responsive :-(
So there’s no real difference between installing Q2W3 Fixed Widget (Sticky Widget) WordPress Plugin and if I added the code to Stallion or created code from scratch to achieve the same result. If the plugin is built well it’s no better than if it’s part of a theme.
The question then is, is it a well built plugin (or theme code) and that takes testing I’m afraid. Always a good idea to read the WordPress support forums about a plugin you plan to use, see if there’s any known issues that might put you off using it. I was looking at the WordPress SEO plugin : SEO Ultimate the other day and it had around 90 PHP error notices, not real PHP errors (not actually broken), when you see lots of error notices the code isn’t coded using best practices which means I wouldn’t use it (poorly coded).
David
WordPress Plugin vs WordPress Theme
Using Older Versions of Widgets
Dave, am on the home stretch of tweaking CSS for Stallion Responsive and have gotten stuck so have one other (okay two other ;) ) questions– Is it possible to use previous versions of widgets?
Basically I am interested in the Recent Comments widget–I’d like to be able to display recent comments without gravatars, and to make the text size smaller, and I’m really not sure the proper way to do that.
I’d also like to be able to display recent comments without the text excerpts (my goal with all these changes is to be able to have a more compact recent comments area which is more quickly-scannable for the user).
So I’m wondering if the old Stallion 7 (6?) comments widget would just be simpler for me to use, if it is functional in this theme (have been through the theme options a few times and haven’t been able to find any option to display old widgets though maybe I missed it). Or, if you can point me to where I ought to make changes to achieve this within the latest recent comments widget.
Maybe there is a control for displaying past versions of widgets in WordPress but unless I’m remembering wrong I thought there was something in the theme control panel in Stallion 7 and previous versions.
To keep things simpler I think I’ll just put the other question in its own post.
Using Older Versions of Widgets
Adding Widgets to a WordPress Child Theme
Although Stallion Responsive v8 is based on Stallion WordPress SEO v7, it’s a separate theme and I removed/replaced some of the older widgets with better ones.
If a Stallion WordPress SEO v7 widget isn’t part of Stallion Responsive v8 it’s either because it was old out of date code or a better alternative was added.
The old recent comments widgets (the ones with 12 and 18 comments) are using very old out of date WordPress code (depreciated code if I recall correctly that I first used in Talian 5).
You could try copying the relevant PHP code for the widgets from Stallion 7 into Stallion Responsive and they should work: probably need some tweaks to account for new CSS changes.
Easiest way to do this is via the Responsive Child theme, edit the file
functions-child.php or functionsplus-child.php
Both files are part of the child theme for this sort of thing, adding new theme features, it’s how I develop new features, first add them to the child theme and then move them to the main theme if they are worth keeping.
You’ll note in the functionsplus-child.php files there’s an example feature that’s only part of the child theme, it’s the more detailed favicon feature that I decided not to add to main Stallion Responsive (was part of Stallion 7) because it had a lot of images associated with it that were better as the child theme (kept the main theme zip file small).
Anyway, what you’d do is find the PHP widget code from Stallion v7 you want and add it to the child theme.
Can’t provide better details as this PC I’m on is even struggling to run Windows Explorer and keeps crashing. Few more days and should have a new PC.
David
Adding Widgets to a WordPress Child Theme
Can't Access Widgets or Custom Nav Menu
Hi David,
After moving from another theme to Stallion, the previous widgets can still be seen in the sidebar, but I am unable to open any of them in the widgets page to delete (sitting as text widgets) or add any new ones. It seems like some kind of corruption, can you please advice?
I can’t drag the items in a menu structure up/down/or sideways. A list of blank doted blocks appears. I can do this on another site so it doesn’t look like is related to the WP version or the browser. Any suggestions please?
Site: http://sportsequipmenteshop.com/baseballglove
Can't Access Widgets or Custom Nav Menu
WordPress Drag and Drop Widget not Working
Combined your two comments into one as they appear to be the same issue.
The dragging and dropping of WordPress widgets and WordPress custom nav menu items use javascript, so it’s most likely a javascript issue.
Stallion Responsive doesn’t modify the WordPress widget or nav menu javascript code, so unlikely to be a Stallion issue.
Possible causes are browser issue: try a different browser.
Conflicting plugin: disable plugins one by one and check if it works.
Other things to try are reboot your PC.
If you can’t fix it you could “Enable accessibility mode” which doesn’t use javascript.
Under “Appearance” >> “Widgets” on the top right click “Screen Options” and if it says “Enable accessibility mode”, click it and it will say “Disable accessibility mode” and widgets can be edited another way.
If the above doesn’t help search Google for
WordPress Drag and Drop Widget not Working
There’s loads of WordPress users with the same issue, maybe one of the support answers will fix your issue.
David
WordPress Drag and Drop Widget not Working