Hybrid: Widget Areas

1. 

   Justin Tadlock (Key Master)
   Posted 4 years ago | Permalink

   I like how Hybrid's widgets are set up. However, I think a bit more can be done with them.

   What I'd like to do is make more widget areas and have fewer widget options (i.e. Primary Home, Single, etc...)

   I've been playing around with the Widget Logic plugin, and it make things ridiculously easy to customize:
   http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/widget-logic

   I think what I'd like to cut back on is the Primary and Secondary sections. Do something like:

   * Primary Default
   * Primary Home
   * Primary Single
   * Primary Page
   * Primary Archive

   Five is a good, round number. Do the same with Secondary.

   Then, I'd like to add other areas like for after/before content. Footer widgets. Or, maybe even a header widget section.

   Where would you like to see additional widget sections?

2. 

   Brenda (Member)
   Posted 4 years ago | Permalink

   These are the positions I've been needing to match

   after nav/before container
   after content/before primary
   after container/before footer

   What are you going to call them thirdly, fourthly etc :)

   Will go download that plugin & play

3. 

   Justin Tadlock (Key Master)
   Posted 4 years ago | Permalink

   Definitely try out widget logic. It makes things super-simple to use.

   I think my third set of widgets would fall under the Subsidiary category.

   But, I could always call all individual widget sections Utility sections.

4. 

   Justin Tadlock (Key Master)
   Posted 4 years ago | Permalink

   In Hybrid 0.3.2, I'm implementing Hybrid Utility Inserts.

   Basically, you'll be able to add widget section by just filtering a special function:

   hybrid_utility_inserts();

5. 

   Thomas Clausen (Member)
   Posted 4 years ago | Permalink

   This is a great idea, it enables targeting to a much broader extend. I like it a lot.

6. 

   Justin Tadlock (Key Master)
   Posted 4 years ago | Permalink

   As it stands at the moment, Hybrid 0.3.2 will call four different functions to handle widgets:

   hybrid_primary_inserts();
   hybrid_secondary_inserts();
   hybrid_subsidiary_inserts();
   hybrid_utility_inserts();

   All four areas will be filterable through your child theme, so you can add/remove any widget sections you want.

   You know what Primary and Secondary are.

   So, what's Subsidiary? It's actually a widget section I'm planning on adding to the footer. I haven't worked out the details of it yet though. I might just decide to leave it off by default and allow activation through the child theme.

   The Utility insert is like a blank canvas. You can add all kinds of widgets to different areas.

   So yes, Thomas is correct — it will allow us to target specific areas of our sites with widgets. Couple that with something like the Widget Logic plugin, and you'll have a pretty darn powerful site.

7. 

   Thomas Clausen (Member)
   Posted 4 years ago | Permalink

   Where would you like to see additional widget sections?

   I would love to see them all over the place :-)

8. 

   Justin Tadlock (Key Master)
   Posted 4 years ago | Permalink

   Speaking a little more of widgets, check out the bookmarks/links widget I built last night:
   http://themehybrid.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/bookmarks-widget.gif

   Basically, it replaces the default WP Links widget and gives you almost unlimited control. Plus, you can use it multiple times.

   This is the level of detail I'd like to bring to all the widgets

9. 

   Thomas Clausen (Member)
   Posted 4 years ago | Permalink

   Looks cool.

   I've actually made a suggestion to have more focus on links atWordpress.org. I would love to see links more connected to the existing tags, categories and so on.

10. 

    Brenda (Member)
    Posted 4 years ago | Permalink

    That widget logic is great and very easy to use - collapsible sidebars become a bit mute though, since body tags will still say the sidebar is active when widget logic disables the widgets for a particular view - just requires a bit of forethought I suppose - or can hybrid body tags run after widget logic?

    Do the 'widget_content' filter options work with a child theme functions.php - I'm guessing not because it would look at the wrong functions.php - simialr to what we discussed here http://themehybrid.com/support/topic/count-widgets-in-secondary - since it can alter the widget output I was wondering whether it could be used to count the active widgets in a position & add an extra class.

    Just rambling thoughts :)

11. 

    Justin Tadlock (Key Master)
    Posted 4 years ago | Permalink

    Well, the sidebar is technically active if widgets exist within it, and the body tag does run after widget logic. This is something that should really be handled by the plugin if it's even possible.

    You can do anything in your child theme's functions.php that you can do in the parent theme though.

12. 

    Justin Tadlock (Key Master)
    Posted 4 years ago | Permalink

    Just got through creating a new Archives widget much like I've done with Pages, Bookmarks, and Categories. This will be in Hybrid 0.3.3.

    I think I'm going to rewrite the default Tags widget as well, and that'll probably be it for the widgets I rework. Unless any of you have any suggestions.

    Update

    I went ahead and finished the tags widget. I might see about making the search widget a "multi-widget."

    Update 2

    OK. Hybrid will have a new search widget in version 0.3.3. I just finished writing it.

13. 

    Arun (Member)
    Posted 4 years ago | Permalink

    is there any idea of integrating the available options theme widgets such as ads, tabs etc.. in hybrid for wp 2.7

14. 

    Justin Tadlock (Key Master)
    Posted 4 years ago | Permalink

    I plan to never add any of Options' widgets to the Hybrid theme. I may add some of them to child themes if a particular child theme could use one or more of them.

    Part of the reasoning behind this is that Hybrid should be as generic as possible to allow for individual child themes to handle how things function and display. By adding widgets like ads, tabs, and others, it forces all child themes to be compatible with those widgets. That's a bad move altogether because not all child themes should use those widgets.

    Hybrid is about making WordPress better, which is the main reason I've been rewriting the default widgets. They really need some work, so they're being rewritten.

15. 

    Justin Tadlock (Key Master)
    Posted 4 years ago | Permalink

    Hybrid version 0.4 will have an Authors Widget. It will take advantage of the wp_list_authors() template tag.

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