I’ve heard a lot of moaning and complaining about the new WordPress dashboard. Some of these complaints are valid, such as the need for the dashboard to be either centered or fluid-width for users with larger screens.
I want to argue the other side of one of the major complaints I’ve read about — the widgets panel. And, I’m the last person one might expect to defend anything 2.5-related after my recent upgrade hassles.
I’m a huge fan of the new widgets panel and have been asking for something like this since the release of my Structure theme.
If you haven’t downloaded WordPress 2.5 or taken a look at the new widgets section, then you’re in for a surprise — the drag-and-drop ability is gone and has been replaced by something entirely different. You now must choose which sidebar/area you want from a drop-down list and wait for a new page to load.
Why defend something that is obviously less usable?
Simple. One of my forum members and I have been discussing this very matter. She needed 50 sidebars for various bands and such. They all needed to be unique. Since this was something I had in mind already, it was easy to get the project set up.
I want you to imagine being able to widgetize anything easily. Now, imagine 50 different widget blocks in the old widget admin panel. Could get messy, right? The new widgets section gives you a drop-down list of your widgetized areas, which sets no limits on how you use your blog.
Here are a couple of pictures you can compare between a WordPress 2.3 and 2.5 install with numerous widget-enabled sidebars to choose from.
(Click the images for an enlarged view of the different versions.)
You’ll notice that you can’t even see the draggable widgets for the 2.3 install because they’re so far down the page you can’t reach them, making it nearly impossible to actually use the sidebars. In the 2.5 install, you can easily choose which sidebar you want. It’s much cleaner.
Cool things you can do with this
You can make widgets for anything and everything.
Want to widgetize your footer? Done. The Cat Photos category sidebar? Done. About page sidebar? Post attachment sidebar? Done and done.
In the next releases of any of my themes, I’m implementing total widget control, at least for the sidebars. Structure theme users will have some extra special options because the theme was built upon this idea.
Here are just the default sidebars I’m adding:
- Sidebar Home
- Sidebar Single
- Sidebar Page
- Sidebar Category
- Sidebar Archive
- Sidebar Author
- Sidebar Search
- Sidebar Day
- Sidebar Month
- Sidebar Year
- Sidebar Time
- Sidebar Date
- Sidebar 404
- Sidebar Attachment
- Sidebar Search
- Sidebar Paged
On top of all those, users can add additional widget areas for any type of page easily. This is only a small sampling of what can be accomplished. All of this is controlled using WordPress’ built-in conditional tags.
What are your thoughts?
We should start thinking about what we can do with this new functionality before reverting back to 2.3. I’m sure the WP development team heard our cries for more widget control. They’ve delivered. Now, it’s time for us to use the power that’s been handed to us.
Some may think this would be a bit “code heavy,” but the sidebar file I’m working with right now is only 2.09 kb.
If you want to check out how I done this for my Options theme, you can read the full discussion. Or, you can beg (in the comments) for me to write a full-blown tutorial on this.
Let me know what you think of the new widgets panel and if you’d still prefer the old one after this revelation.
I haven’t explore all the options in the new widget panel, but now that you mention them, I’m up for a challenge. I think that not everyone like changes, after awhile people will stop the moaning. Me, I like it.
I totally agree with you Justin on this one. I love what ‘they’ have done with the widget control. I think it is such a logic thing to use widgets to do exactly what you want them to do and where you want them to do it. I hope all WP theme designers will pick up upon this option as I expected you would be one of the first
Looking forward to see where this is going. I think this little widget thing has the possibility to start a little revolution.
Please please please Justin, write a tutorial how to do this…. I want conditional widgets on a few of my pages.
Luis
I think people will settle in with the new dashboard after a while too. I’ve heard it mentioned that you shouldn’t change designs just for the sake of change. I totally disagree with that. Sometimes a new face on an old product gets people excited about it again. If nothing else, it generates discussion, and ultimately, more publicity, which means more people using WordPress.
Remkus
In the end, it’s all about allowing users more control over their own blogs, getting out of the way and letting them create. I’ve never been a huge fan of the old drag-and-drop interface because it limited what you can do with widgets.
Kim
I’ve got a special tutorial for Options theme users on this forum topic. It’s specific to the Options theme, which you’re using right now. Just stop by there and ask any questions about implementing it with your theme. If I write a tutorial on the blog, it’ll be a bit more general to cover the needs of other theme users.
Totally. Now if only they weren’t called sidebars. That name is going to start making less and less sense in the year ahead. I’d rather have widgetarea(‘something’).
Ian
That’s the one thing I’m disappointed about with the widgets panel. It reads, “You are using 3 widgets in the ‘Sidebar Home Left’ sidebar.”
Why? We were given this functionality but somebody’s trying to keep us from thinking outside of the box.
Some users might be confused when using my Structure theme and they see “You are using 3 widgets in the ‘Home Block Left’ sidebar.” Home Block Left isn’t a sidebar. It’s a section on the home page.
We have to stop this thinking that widgets are for sidebars only. This will allow theme developers to really step out of having to code so much within the theme and allow users to put what they want where they want.
Justin,
I totally agree with you especially about the “why change something that ain’t broke” folk. Everything evolves – without change we’d still be using beveled edges on everything and flashing graphics. Ewww.
The widget toolbar change was a bit of a shock at first and took me a minute to work my way around. I would say it was my least favourite bit of 2.5, an upgrade I’m really enjoying. However, your explanation of how it could be used now makes sense of the changes.
Thank you. And like Kim, looking forward to your tutorial.
Personally, I find the new widgets screen much more usable. Although I only find one little issue, where changing the sidebar to work with is not Ajaxified, a bit annoying, I must say that the new screen is pretty good.
I agree with everything you’ve said in your post, Justin, especially the part about changing the sidebar. It helps a whole lot if a theme provides a whole lot of different sidebars, like Options.
Please write a tutorial!
I’m another huge fan for WP2.5 widgets panel, too. I agree with you, when we were using WordPress2.3 it was hard to scroll to the top of the page dragging and dropping, specially when you’re working with 10 sidebars having 10 widgets each.
However, I don’t agree with the removal of widget editting popup.
Hi justin beforehand agradesco you everything you do for us, we know pòco templates and code html.en portal blog and Web tube inmenza the opportunity to meet and download the brilliant and beautiful template tailored for visionary blogger, which tu.esta created the template vicsionary has been a challenge for me until this day dormir.y leaves me is that I was unable to activate the “TAB” because I do not understand how esplicacion is hace.como also ask you this Visionary is the template of 3 columns?, is that the demo I saw a blog site and I saw that if it was 3 column but leaves 2 ami me, as I use the dime 3 column .. there some tutorial ayudame by fa. pleaaaassssseeeee ….
Elizabeth
http://Www.fundacionayudaalrefugiado.blogspot.com
en español
Hola justin de antemano te agradesco todo lo que haces por nosotros, los que conocemos pòco de plantillas y codigos html.en el portal de blog y web tube la inmenza oportunidad de conocer y descargar la genial y bella plantilla visionary adaptada para blogger, la cual creaste tu.esta plantilla la vicsionary ha sido un reto para mi que hasta el dia de hoy no me deja dormir.y es que no he podido activar los “TAB” porque no entiendo la esplicacion de como se hace.como tambien te pregunto esta plantilla la Visionary es de 3 columnas?, es que en el demo que vi en blog y web pude observar que si era de 3 columnas pero ami me sale de 2,dime como utilizo la 3 columna..existe algun tutorial ayudame por fa….pleaaaassssseeeee.
elizabeth
http://www.fundacionayudaalrefugiado.blogspot.com
I had forgotten something, what would you tube videos appear with the big screen and on the side of the elementos.gracias for your patience
cellobella
For users that only want to think in terms of having a couple of sidebars that are widgtized, it might not be so great. However, if we start thinking of new ways to use this, then it just makes sense.
I might just have to write that tutorial.
BoltClock
I think the WP team is just taking it one step at a time. Maybe we can get the Ajax version in the next release.
The multiple sidebars aren’t actually in the latest release of Options because I wanted to wait around for enough users to get 2.5. However, it’s already setup for users to add on to.
J Mehmett
I wanted to implement a lot more widgetized areas with my Structure theme but was limited by having to scroll so much, which made the drag-and-drop interface unusable. I’m just excited about seeing where this is going.
Elizabeth
Thanks for your kind words. The template you’re using for Blogger was not created by me. Someone took my design and published it for Blogger without permission. The Visionary template is only for WordPress.
It’s a great improvement to the functionality of Wordpress. Drupal, that other open source CMS, allows for blocks and regions to be placed anywhere on the page, making it highly customizable. I’d like to see Wordpress change “Sidebar” to something like “Region” to foster the idea that widgets could be used on any part of the page.
Yes, I like the new widget layout/options/functionality. It took me a minute or two after upgrading to wrap my head around the new format, but I began to see how wonderful it can be. I really like it.
BTW, I use the Options theme and I have a few pages that utilize the No Sidebar format and I would love to implement a bottom section (sidebar) to put in three specific widgets across the bottom of those pages. So where’s that tutorial teaching me how to do just that?
I couldn’t agree more, I love where 2.5 is going. There will always be some growing pains when things old become brand new again.
Love your Option themes and Structure themes.
Mike
I was one of the many disappointed with the new widget control panel. I like that we have to ability to have LOTS and LOTS of sidebars, and things don’t get disorganized. BUT, drag and drop functionality was a big plus for me. Now it is much more tedious to move widgets around from one sidebar to another. I do this frequently.
Additionally, it’s IMPOSSIBLE to move a Text or RSS widget from one sidebar to another. You just can’t do it anymore. The widget is stripped of its content, you have a copy/paste everything over. This is very irritating.
I wish we could keep drag and drop and just find a happy medium between 2.3 and 2.5.
I totally agree with you – widgets in 2.5 are much improved, more powerful and give the admin greater control… It just may take a little time for people to change the way they think… and the design/layout is great.
I’ve been reading the long and mainly critical feedback (wordpress.org) on the new WP 2.5 and There is one central issues that I see behind this. If you are a seasoned blogger and you are used to the old WP admin pages, the new 2.5 version is bound to cause a sharp intake of breath. Wordpress has primarily been a blogging platform, but over a the recent past developers and users have seen opportunities to extend wordpress into a CMS role and take on the huge market of users who would normally go to Drupal, Joomla etc. This is an exciting extension of WP, but it means the core functions and interfaces have to move to accommodate better CMS control. The ability to move content around in blocks of code and make this discreet, as in widget positioning is part of the strengths of CMS platforms. Wordpress 2.5 has firmly established that control and with theme structures as we see on JustinTadlock.com and other developers, it is clear that wordpress is quite capable of achieving and exceeding the competition in the CMS role.
Now for the seasoned blogger, who is happy with basic ‘bloggroll’ mechanic, there are new features that appear both intrusive and cumbersome to their way of thinking and normal operation. It’s inevitable that more control becomes more complex. However, I think it’s important that Wordpress developers remember that this is first and foremost a blogging platform, supported by millions of bloggers, many of which love it for its ease of use and simplicity. The move towards CMS features is both a good and a risky thing, as it stands to alienate some of the traditional community of users.
If I were making a creative comment here, I would advise that developers come clean and recognise the duality of their user base and make provision for not only maintaining the blogging community, but also encouraging the CMS development as well.
Ok, does that mean another branch of WP? we already have WP and WPMU. So should there be WPCMS as well as the traditional blogging version seen up to 2.3.3? Maybe this is better rationalised by making the admin section skinable and providing options for blogging features and a CMS version. I don’t know, but underneath the inevitable carping and complaints of some users, there is an underlying reluctance to change that comes from the seasoned blogging community. Can we afford to ignore those users, or simply tell them to ‘get over it’?
Back to the widget controls; This can become a big beast to control. Having used xoops and drupal for a number of websites, I am very familiar with the pros and cons of content placements. Add into the mix ‘permissions’ or roles for each block of content (future concept) and it’s a full fledged interface challenge.
Final Zen comment … ‘Sometimes less is more’
Justin,
I wanted to contact you by mail but your Contact page returns a 404. Would you be kind enough to shoot me an email? (ozh at planetozh dot com)
Hi there! Just wanted to let you know that the Structure and Visionary demos are returning a database error. Tried to find your e-mail address, but … well, what Ozh said.
Dan Butcher
Yeah, I’m right there with you about changing the name of it. Sidebar isn’t quite fitting anymore.
SmockLady
The bottom section widgets will definitely come. I’m not sure what release, but it’s definitely something I’ve been seriously considering. Mostly, I want to add it without adding too much extra CSS. That’s what new features have come down to — finding ways to not make page load times heavier. It’s been a fun challenge thus far.
Mike
Thanks. I just hope people start embracing it, and we move forward from here.
Leon
I’m right there with you. It took me a bit to get used to the new admin. I’m used to it now since I’ve been working with it for a few weeks. It’s been hard to switch back to 2.3 for testing.
groovy
You bring in some valid points to this conversation. “Average Joe Blogger” doesn’t necessarily need all these new features. Someone mentioned earlier that we need to find a good balance between 2.3 and 2.5 features. I never use widgets for my own site because I like to make things complicated and code stuff right into the theme. However, I do like playing around with them.
There was another point earlier about making this thing “Ajaxified.” I also wouldn’t mind bringing back the drag and drop from the left to the right of the screen.
There’s sort of a fine line developers have to walk between usability and usefulness (for lack of a better word). Yes, the new widget panel is more useful in terms of control over your site but at times, less usable. I’m hoping the WP team continues building on this foundation that they’ve built with the new widget interface by making it more usable, especially for Average Joe because that is the largest portion of the user base.
Thanks for the input and putting in a little for the other side.
Ozh
I’ll send you an email as soon as I get a chance. I had to take the contact page down because of the flood of emails I was getting about things not working when the site went down.
Adrienne Doss
That’s why there’s the bold text on those pages that reads, “Demo is currently down.”
Thanks for letting me know though.
As I said before, I’m really in love with the new style of the widgets panel, but I have a problem with them, may be it’s popular among peeps.
Once I drag the widget into the sidebar, I cannot edit that certain widget unless I save it first. The problem is that it reverts back to the widgets panel when I click “Edit”, so I must hit “Save” then edit it, then re-hit “Save”, which kills TIME.
J Mehmett
That’s definitely some kind of a bug. I don’t know if it’s browser-specific or what. I haven’t actually experienced this problem though.
Isn’t blogging all about killing TIME anyway?
The text box glitch seems to be only IE related, doesn’t seem to happen Firefox or Safari, but I likewise had the same issue when testing in Exploerer.
Is there any way you’d share your secrets about how to build a video center like you did in your themes. I don’t even want the whole center, I just want to be able to have a playlist that plays the videos in teh same space/spot… please help?
I personally like 2.5. I’m not a designer/coder – but I know enough to be made fun of. So far I’ve not experienced any discomfort with the upgrade.
Summer
Thanks for that.
Nick
I do have plans to start writing tutorials on some of this stuff. It’s not really much different than using my tabs tutorial and video tutorial though. Basically, I just made the tabs to the right side and added the video in the tabbed content area.
Leonard Klaatu
That’s good news. There’s always a bit of fear when upgrading, especially when the upgrade changes the database.
Justin, you make some great points about the new widget admin page. I only had the default 8 or 10 widgets, and I hated having to drag AND scroll up the page to place them in the sidebars.
Thanks for opening our eyes to the better way of managing so many widgets.
@J Mehmett – Save Edit Re-save is a pain. With enough comments, 2.6 may fix this?
Hi
if you have drag&drop or the new way
to manage 50 widget ready sidebars is heavy
but try to rearrange one widget to another sidebar and you get grey hairs with the new way…text widgets loose their content..
it would be great if we can safe the content andoption for a widget and arrange it to this or another sidebar is a second or first way.
most of the users need *to see * what they have done -this feature is gone,
regards
Monika
I like this option, I create right now a “404 sidebar” for avoid show adsense there.
Brian Meagher
There’s definitely some usefulness to this. I also hope the problem J Mehmett is having will be fixed (I’m guessing for IE?).
Monika
Thanks for your input. Those are definitely some valid points about usability. Some of the discussion has centered on a nice medium between drag and drop and the new interface.
I think the WP team will probably get on top of the saved content problem. Maybe when they “Ajaxify” it as another person mentioned, it’ll make saving the content much easier.
The new widget interface is definitely more versatile and functional as far as use on the site goes, but it’s a little less usable on the backend. Once that’s balanced out, I think most people will truly appreciate what we can do with this.
mini
That’s definitely a good use for something like this.
I actually dislike the Widget functionality. As what Monika stated, text widget “contents” disappear if you are trying to move it on and off. I have lost at least 8 text-widgets and its content. And there’s no way to create another text-widget, so now I have to learn how to “hardcode” it on the stylesheet.
I like the older version’s drag and click widget panel, it’s more easier that way. However I have downloaded the Dashboard widget plugin but it seems as if having a problem with Safari browser.
I want the old feature back.
Its only happen when using the IE, while using the firefox, i didn’t see any problem. Maybe some coding required to mod this new WP version
I support the widget style in Wordpress 2.5, it’s less space consuming.
Personally I like the new panel, although I am going to miss wrestling with the drag and drop…
Also just to that I have made a simple Javascript app for generating the template php code for wordpress widgets… http://programming.has.no.com/widgettemplate/
Might save you some time if you make many widges
i guess this is the one negative feature about 2.5, everything else has got better, hopefully in the next version the widget preferences will be switched back to 2.3 style
K
I hope they fix the text widget’s not saving thing. I’m sure someone will come up with a solution for this. Maybe a plugin?
davcheong
Using IE — now, isn’t that the problem? But yes, most of the problems I’ve seen have been from IE users.
Mario
That’s definitely one of the reasons I like it. It takes up less space, which allows you to widgetize more things.
widgetguy
I’m going to “miss wrestling with the drag and drop” too.
Thanks for the link. I’ll have to try that out sometime.
luq
I’m arguing that this is a better feature. Actually, I think it’s the best new feature of 2.5. Sure, there are some bugs that need squashing, but that’s with any new piece of technology we get.
To everyone
Judging by some of the comments asking for the old drag-and-drop interface back, I see that some people are finding it hard to embrace this newer, better interface. As I said earlier, I think we need to start thinking about what we can do as opposed to what we can’t do with this.
I can understand your point that if you have something like 50 sidebars the new version of the widgets panel might be more useful. My guess is the majority of WP bloggers have 1-3 sidebars though, so that usefulness is lost with the majority. If I had to choose between the old version or the new version, it would be a no-brainer, the old version. I agree we don’t have to necessarily revert to the 2.3 version if something is done to make the 2.5 version more usable. If nothing changes though, 2.3 was better in my opinion.
Jim
Jim L
There’s that word again — “sidebars.”
Any more than 3-4 widgetized sections (depending on screen size) and problems arise with 2.3′s interface. Dragging, dropping, and scrolling gets pretty tough sometimes. The main reason the majority of users only have 1-3 sections right now is because themes haven’t caught up with the new functionality. I imagine we’ll start seeing new themes and updated themes in the next few months which take advantage of the new interface.
I do agree that there are some things, as far as usability is concerned, that need some sprucing up.
Good points. It’ll be interesting to see how it plays out in the next few months.
Jim
I appreciate it that WP2.5 has made major improvement over the previous version. But still, I can’t get over the fact that I can’t just simply drag one widget from left to right.
I have a post about this here.
Rai
The drag-and-drop feature was nice, and I think we’ll see some form of it brought back. I think everything would’ve been nicer with the “baby step” that we missed with 2.4. Of course, we didn’t get that, and we have this major overhaul of the dashboard.
It’s absolutly plain crap. Why? Read this.
I prefer the new widget panel. The only thing I don’t like is that if you add 2 text sidebar items they interfere with each other.
Huug
You make some valid points in your article. However, how many times are you moving a text widget around on your blog? It seems to me that this shouldn’t be something you’re doing every day. Pick something and stick with it for a while.
As I’ve said though, I think there’ll be improvements.
stonedoubt
I haven’t ran across that yet because I haven’t tried to add two text widgets in a sidebar. I’ll have to check it out though.
I like it, the only thing I can’t get use to is having the publish button right beside the entry box, I’m so used to scrolling down to see it under it. That and, the blogroll is now shown as ‘links’ and most of all, under manage, when I’m clicking an entry it takes me to edit it — you have to click the ‘published’ link to view it. I still can’t get rid of that habit.
Angela
I’m a huge fan of the redesign. My biggest issue with the overall design is the lack of post, category, and tag IDs shown. You have to hover over the links just to see them.
Hey Justin,
I am familiar with conditional tags and the 2.5 widget system, was just wondering: could post a sample code for a conditional widget? I’m using the Wordpress Sandbox to build my theme, and currently have 2 sidebars. Perhaps you could give me an example for a
single.phpconditional widget?It would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
Figured it out: heres an easy way, just wasn’t thinking about it correctly. Thanks anyway.
Yeah, that’s a good article on how to use those conditional widgets for those type of things. Honestly, I might have pointed you to that article myself if you hadn’t beaten me to it. It’s one of those I have permanently bookmarked.
You can also check out my Widgetize This! post.
I am one of those who intensely dislike the new widget administration page. Reading through the comments here it seems the main complaints are:
*Lack of drag&drop: Yes, if you had lots of sidebars (the name will stick, get over it) it got a bit hard to get widgets in the right places. But for 90% of people it was a lifesaver. Easy and fast widget management.
*Text and RSS widgets cannot be moved across sidebars without copying them out of the browser and then pasting them back in. Check Huug’s comment and the link he put up.
All in all this ‘new’ interface is not a step back, but rather a jump back. Even now, with WP2.6 out and WP2.7 development geared up this stands as an unresolved usability issue. While asking ‘how many times do you move widgets around’ is a valid question, keep in mind when developing a theme you move stuff around a lot, specially widgets. You will run into issues when switching back and forth between a 1-sidebar theme and a 2-or-more sidebars theme.
Now for solutions… myself I think the best way to solve this would be to heavily AJAXify the whole damn thing, enabling fast and easy drag&drop. Perhaps instead of having to use a drop down selector on the right side of the page to switch between sidebars they can just be displayed at the same time in their current form.
This is the kind of things that make people switch to other platforms, be another blogging platform like Movable Type of a full-fledge CMS like Drupal.
it’s much better in wp 2.7, isnt it?
You can get this drag & drop feature working also using WP 2.8.1 Beta 1 or 2 and the latest development version of WP Ecommerce.
may be sidebars for specific categories?, sidebar_cat1, sidebar_cat2. I’m actually using that configuration in many sites!
yes albert is much better in wp 2.7
try it