The default WordPress widgets have always been a bit limiting, but that’s all about to change. The Widgets Reloaded plugin will give your widgets the boost they’ve been needing.
Widgets are actually useful now
This plugin replaces several of the default WordPress widgets with new widgets that’ll give you far more control than you’re accustomed to.
Take a look at a screenshot of the widgets.
The Widgets
- Archives
- The Archives widget replaces the default Archives and Recent Posts widgets.
- The controls are based on the wp_get_archives() function.
- Authors
- The Authors widget is an additional widget and not one of the default WordPress widgets.
- The controls are based on the wp_list_authors() function.
- Bookmarks
- This widget replaces the default Links widget.
- The controls are based on the wp_list_bookmarks() function.
- Calendar
- This widget replaces the default Calendar widget.
- The controls are based on the get_calendar() function.
- Categories
- Replaces the default Categories widget.
- The controls are based on the wp_list_categories() function.
- Pages
- Replaces the default Pages widget.
- The controls are based on the wp_list_pages() function.
- Search
- Replaces the default Search widget.
- The option to use the theme search form depends on whether your theme has a
searchform.php, and it will only work for WordPress 2.7+. - Tags
- Replaces the default Tag Cloud widget.
- The controls are based on the wp_tag_cloud() function.
Some things to note
This plugin was developed on WordPress 2.7+, but it should be backward compatible down to 2.5.
Widgets are based on their corresponding template tags, so you need to be familiar with the parameters to be able to use this plugin effectively.
The option to use the theme’s search form in the Search widget means that your theme must have a file named searchform.php, located in the theme root. It’s also a WordPress 2.7-only feature. Also, if the theme’s search form has been loaded once, it will not load again in the widget.
The Archives widget replaces both the default Archives and Recent Posts widget. You can display your recent posts by selecting postbypost as the Type.
Do not use this plugin if you’re using the Hybrid WordPress theme. These widgets are built into your theme.
Download the plugin
- Download (WP.org plugins repository)
- Download Version 0.1.1
- Support Questions
Please don’t use the comments or my contact page to ask support questions. Use my support forums at Theme Hybrid, which is where I handle all support questions for my WordPress projects. Feel free to report any bugs you come across though.
Now, go ahead and enjoy your new widgets.
This looks just grand. Got to download and have a look. Thanks for the information.
I really like using them. A lot. I’ve never used widgets on my own sites until I started working with these. I use them along with the Widget Logic plugin.
sorry for asking for support here, but I just activated this plugin and my site went white. front and back end. not using your hybrid theme, but a custom theme.
any other known incompatibilities?
No, there are no known incompatibilities.
well, thx. then I’ll have to wait until I get home, connect with ssh and delete the widget files
Justin this looks great.
Using the standard widgets only seems to mess up my blogs. This sounds like it may just solve that little problem.
I have downloaded the zip file and will check it out right away. I have all my planned work done for the day already and it not even 8am yet, so I have plenty of time to play today.
Thanks
This is a really nice and useful plugin. My not so saavy wp users will love the ability to configure stuff themselves.
This should really be standard stuff in WP.
ok, I foudn out what went wrong: I used an automatic plugin installer and it just dumped all files into my plugin directory. deleting them recovered my blog, but still I ma wondering how to properly install this plugin? there are no indications…
Plugins really make our life so easy. I simply love it.
James Mann
All your work done by 8 a.m.? Some days, I don’t go to sleep until 8 a.m.
Seriously though, these widgets will make your widget-using life much easier.
Brian Brandt
That’s what I’ve always thought. I shouldn’t be writing a plugin to fix the default widgets.
ovidiu
I’ll add installation instructions in the next update to the
readme.htmlfile. You just drop the unzippedwidgets-reloadedfolder into yourpluginsfolder though. Isn’t this pretty standard for plugins?Wordpress [sic] Plugin
Yes, they do make life much easier.
yes, thats pretty standard, but the download link above, does not seem to contain a folder
just a bunch of files….
maybe you used a weird zip tool? I tried automatic isntallation of hte plugin, so it got unzipped on the server without a folder, and I opened it with winrar locally, no folder either… what zip tool did you use? can you check again?
The download itself is a folder. There’s no need of an additional folder inside of that one.
Justin,
Thanks for sharing. I’ve hacked together several of my own plugins to provide similar functionality but I like this since it’s all contained into one.
Greatly appreciate it.
All the best.
Stu
There nothing more frustrating than having little or no control over the preferences of a given widget but thanks to your awesome plug-in, playing with widgets is now a lot more fun… and productive!
Justin, I believe ovidiu (and possibly the auto-install plugin he used) were expecting your files to be in a folder, THEN compressed, meaning that decompressing the ZIP file would result in a single folder, with these files in it.
Currently…
widgets-reloaded.zip>All files directly in ZIP
Expected…
widgets-reloaded.zip>WidgetsReloaded folder, ZIPPED up, with >All files here.
Plugin looks like a great idea, will be testing this out once I’ve upgraded my sites to WP2.7
Thanks
Stu McLaren
You’re welcome. I’ve been been using my Hybrid theme for testing grounds for stuff like this. Then, I just figured it’d be great to package all this stuff up into a single plugin to let others use.
Claude Gelinas
That’s why I’ve never used widget before. I’ve been getting a bit tired of having to hardcode everything, so I just sat down for a few hours on a few different nights and put them all together.
I’m actually using widgets, and they’re useful. You could really do some great things with widgets if you combine this with the Widget Logic plugin.
ChrisM
Yeah, I understand what the auto-install plugin is expecting. I package my plugins and themes like this because I’ve had so many support questions where users would end up uploading the plugin like this:
Definitely try out the new widgets though. I’ve been having loads of fun using them.
OMG, this look like a massive essential plugin, it as the categories widget premium functionality i have been searching for, and much more. Good to see something like this being released from a reputable source. Will report on it once i get to play around with it more.
Thanks Justin
oyster.
privateisland.ca
Please do report back with how the widgets are working out for you. This is something I believe should be default to WordPress, so I’m hoping someone from WP will take note.
Is it possible to somehow exclude a page when you are using the “archive” “postbypost” widget?
Im pulling all post into the sidebar, and want some exclusions of some post, not necessarily from the same category … Am I better of using some other “coding” ?
Re: installation, this is how it worked for me:
1. Created a ‘widgets-reloaded’ empty folder.
2. Unzipped ‘widgets-reloaded.zip’ into that folder.
3. FTP’d that folder into /public_html/wp-content/plugins
This is a great plugin, very needed. It should come standard with WP.
Thank you!
Brian
The only things possible with this widget are what’s possible with the
wp_get_archives()function, so that’s a no.What you’re looking for is some type of posts widget, not an archives widget. I might be creating this as a plugin at some point.
Hmm.. I made a work around instead, where I pull the post from every category I choose. That way I can exclude some post from the list
I explained it here (in danish, but you can see the code).
http://wordpress-themes.dk/design-og-kode/exclude-indlaeg-seneste-listen
I just hope you’re not making these types of changes to the widgets themselves. You should definitely be writing your own widget/plugin to handle this.
No no, not to the widget
. Just hardcoding it in to the sidebar.php.
Cool. Whenever I get a little extra free time, I think I might make a widget called Query Posts or something that’ll allow you to input things like categories to include/exclude, posts to exclude, and so on.
nice work! thank you for building such incredible common sense into the configuration – its’ exactly what people have been hacking away at manually for years!
works like a charm, thanks again
oyster
Well I see that’s an impressive widget there.Thanks for making Wordpress much more easier to me.I appreciate your efforts. I sure will be waiting for your next widget here.!
How do I change the Bookmarks title so instead of “Bookmarks” it says “My Other Companies?”
It says we can order the links by “id.” Where are the links ids?
Is there a way to extend the width of the search form?
I would recommend that you reverse the position of the buttons “done” and “remove” since most people are right-handed, they have their mouses on the right side, and therefore more naturally click the button on the right side.
Nice work on the widget, Justin.
Oops, sorry about the widget support questions. I’ll move over to the support forums.
Although, the bookmarks question might be a bug report but I’m not sure.
This has nothing to do with the plugin. This is how WordPress does it.
There is a bug with the Bookmarks widget, but what you’re referring to is not a bug.
Justin, in your “Cool Wordpress Stuff” box in the sidebar — are you using one of the Widgets Reloaded components? If so, which one?
Maritn — I’m using the Bookmarks widget for that section.
Hi
just a quick question, I’ve use the widget reloader for ‘pages’, just woundering how I set the styles, as the opriginal sidebar styles have now disappeared ?
Great plugin though.
Regards
Ashley
Ashley — You’ll need to ask the person that made your theme about styling widgets because that’s a theme thing, not a plugin thing.
Hi Justin
To clarify if used a different theme I may not have the same problem ?
Regards
Ash
Nice plug-in!
As a feature request i would love to have an enable/disable button to every widget. If anyone knows how to disable the default widgets (eg. categorys, archive) i would be very thankful.
Best regards
Thomas
Hi Justin, do you know if it will conflict with your structure theme widgets ?
Regards,
Ashley — Maybe. Maybe not. All you can do is try. You won’t have this problem with a properly-coded theme.
Thomas — Thanks. I very much doubt I’ll be adding an entirely extra options panel for something like that though (it would take an extra options page). Plus, there would be no point. You can do everything with these widgets that you can do with the default widgets (and more!).
JoSe — I haven’t tried the plugin with the Structure theme. The best thing to do is try and report your findings on the Structure theme forum.
great plugin. wish it included a text widget reloaded, with the same wysiwyg as the post page. media uploader and all.
Brooke — Thanks. I won’t be adding a WYSIWY editor to the text widget though. It’s beyond the scope of this plugin.
Thanks for coding this plugin! I’ve wondered why the WordPress guys haven’t beefed up the widget page to support all the parameters.
Did you somehow rename the widgets, though? When I activate the plugin with 3 standard widgets in my sidebar (categories, links, recent posts), it says there are 3 but only shows the recent posts one. As soon as I deactivate this plugin, all 3 are there again. I can work around it, but just wondered why it would be counting 3 but showing 1.
Joy — I’d recommend removing any default WordPress widgets before using these. This plugin unregisters those widgets.
Is there a way to use the “Recent comments” widget with the plugin?
Justin, thank you for this much needed plug-in. May I suggest one feature that may be very useful. Often the home page shows the most recent 10 posts, adding a recent posts on the sidebar repeats these same 10 posts. I would have liked to see an option to skip any number of post from the beginning, I personally would have started at post 11. Your plug-in has “Limit” option, would it be possible to add an “Start At” option so the Recent Posts widget skips that number of posts.
Thanks again.
Andrés Sanhueza — you can use any other widgets you want with along with this.
Tim — No, that’s not possible.
wp_get_archives()doesn’t allow you to skip posts. You would need another plugin or widget to do that.This plugin isn’t about adding new things to WordPress. It’s about making the default options available in the widget control panel. So, it’s not my plugin that has a
limitsetting; it’s the WP template tag that has this option.The drop down option in categories widget is gone after installing Widgets Reloaded. How to get it back?
Sunny — To get the drop-down option back, uninstall this plugin.
Justin – Any chance you could add this to the Wordpress.org Codex so that the Wordpress community can much more easily FIND this, and perhaps raise its chances of being merged in to the core functionality of the Wordpress widgets?
Using Google to find your widget was simply a stroke of luck, but I am still grateful!
Thanks for this plugin! Works great and does what it needs to do. However one new feature would be nice in future releases. I would like to be able to show the author of the posts when listing posts in a category. Once doing that there could be implemented also the time stamp data visibility check boxes.
I had a problem like Sunny had. I only really needed one part of this plugin and the rest made everything worse for me, but instead of just deactivating it, I modified it so that it didn’t mess with any of the other widgets.
Took me a while to get up and running, but was well worth the effort.
I was just wondering if I am missing something here: my default wordpress widget for showing the most recent posts has disappeared so I reread all comments on this page here and some people are talking about that feature but I see there is no reloaded widget for that function
are you planning in beefing that one up too and have you any clues why that default widget would just disappear? I mean I checked the widgets.php file and the function is still there 
?
Always on the look out for good wp plugins
This is certainly one of the better ones
much appreciated
Gaz
This is a very handy plugin
thanks very much for sharing
regards
John C
Thank you for providing this plugin
It has certainly made my life a lot easier
hey there.
I was wondering how I can get the bookmarks widget to display a title of my chosing and not simply “Bookmarks” as it seems to do by default.
The widget is really useful. Way better than default wordpress options. Thanks
Trying out your Calendar plugin. Display format of calendar seems to be ‘compressed’. Checked it out on IE7, IE8, Firefox3. Any ideas?
Cirurgia Plastica — No problem. I’m glad you like it.
Kevin Weilbacher — The display of the calendar has nothing to do with this plugin and everything to do with your theme.
well, i just noticed the same problem with the calendar so I was just wondering, if your calendar widget outputs the calendar the same way the original widget did? if so, it is indeed the theme formatting.
Took me a while to figure out how it works, but it’s awesome!
ovidiu — Yes, it uses the same basic
get_calendar()function. Even if it didn’t, the widget itself has nothing to do with how something is styled. How things look is a direct result of the style rules in a theme’sstyle.cssfile.Anja — Yeah, the controls can be a little crazy at first, but once you kind of figure out what does what, it’s a fun plugin.
excuse me? if your widget outputs and the original outputs of course there will be a difference, so unless your widget outputs the same structure as the originals, every theme has to be adapted, so your widget can only replace the originals if it keeps the same structure!
ovidiu — You need to step back right now and check your attitude before you comment on my blog. I’ve already explained this in my last reply. If you don’t understand that CSS is used to style XHTML, then you have a lot to learn about running a Web site.
If your theme developer’s CSS coding skills is not up to snuff, then that’s not the fault of a plugin developer.
Although I’ve already stated that the same structure is used, it still doesn’t matter if it has a completely different structure. CSS is CSS is CSS. This has absolutely nothing to do with the plugin.
ok, it seems there was something cut out of my comment. I said that if the original widget outputs i.e. a structure of lists within unordered lists and your plugin outputs i.e. lists within ordered lists, themes might have to have css code added for this if the theme developer only catered for the original structure and didn’t include any css for any other structure than default widgets would output.
I don’t understand why you got so defensive in your first comment above, as you could have simply stated that you use the same structure, so the calendar output by your widget will look exactly the same as the original calendar’s widget output.
Still, even with your temper, I do love your plugins
so usually I just avoid commenting on your site.
cheers mate
ovidiu — There still seems to be something that you’re not understanding here. How something is displayed is handled by CSS. It doesn’t matter what structure it’s in.
Still, not the fault of a plugin developer if the widget is displayed incorrectly. If the XHTML is valid, then however it’s styled is still 100%, completely, without a doubt something that’s handled within the theme.
It’s easy to get defensive when I take the time out of my day to answer your question and get a response that starts off with “excuse me?” and then goes into an argument, trying to contradict something I’ve said. I’m glad you like the plugins, but I simply don’t take attitude from anyone, ever.
My apologies.
Ovidiu
hello Justin,
another quick question: I noticed that when using your widgets, i.e. archive, the post count comes on a line by itsself, the source code looks like:
do you have any idea what could be the reason why its not displayed on the same line?
Is there a reason that the Bookmarks (links) widget doesn’t have an option to change the title?
hello Justin,
I am using your widgets reloaded on a wpmu installation and it works perfect except for one blog, where the categories widget isn’t completely replaced, i.e. on that perticular blog, I see your categories widget and the original one as well and both work.
any idea what could have happened to that one particular blog?
btw. what I changed is that isntead of using the plugin commander to autoactivate your plugin, now I use the recently built in function in wpmu 2.7.2 to activate plugins site wide.
I am using Widgets Reloaded in the latest version of WPMU and am having issues with the Categories widget as well. I cannot get categories excluded for some reason and am at a loss as to what it might be.
Excellent plugin. Those default ones have been long overdue for a “reload”.
Cheers
First off, love the plugin, lots of great enhancements to the standard widgets.
I have a question about the “child_of” option under “pages”.
What I want to do is only display the list of pages for the current section of the website. I have three nav items each with sub pages, so while viewing any page a specific section (parent or child) I want to see the page list in my widget for the parent and its children. The “child_of” field can accomplish this as a one-off, but it’s not dynamic.
Is this possible?
Very smart solution.
Widgets Reloaded !
I was thinking if wordpress should have used these set of widgets instead of current ones.
One big question though, the current version in wordpress plugin repository shown as Widgets-Reloaded-Version 0.1.2 and also stated that it’s compatible up to wordpress2.7.1
But these widgets reloaded thing come bundled with hybrid theme version 0.6 which works flawlessly with wordpress 2.8.2
So I was wondering if there is any update for this plugin ?
or the current version (0.1.2) at the wordpress plugin page is already up to it?
It would be great if Justin (or anybody who can) would help provide the confirmation regarding the compatibility ( with wp2.8.2 )
Hi Justin, Great plugin!
I have one little wish…
It would be great if it were possible to hook in to override some of the settings using a filter or something. For example, in the categories widget, the ability to filter the query just before wp_list_categories:
$categories = apply_filters( ‘filter_widget_reloaded_categories’, $categories );
I basically needed the power to customise the categories widget – which is why I used your plugin – and be to be able to exclude some pages under certain conditions (like wether a user was logged in or a cookie was set). Adding a filter as above to your plugin seemed to be the best way to do it, then I could just write a filter function to alter the include/exclude queries as needed.
If you would consider adding such filters to the plugin I’m sure many WordPress developers would find it useful.
show_post_count doesn’t seem to be working in the latest version.
Justin,
This is a great plugin – I can’t believe that I only started using it a short time ago!
A few little bugs I noticed with the most recent release:
1. Where is my Recent Posts widget? You seem to have disabled it but not provided an alternative – or am I not looking in the right place?
2. The naming conventions do not tie in to the WordPress way of naming things. I spent a while looking for the Links widget which you have renamed to Bookmarks. Would it be better to stick with the same naming conventions?
Other than that, all great – keep up the good work
Good comments thanks The widget is really useful. Way better than default wordpress options. Thanks
Hi Justin,
Loving your work. You totally kill it.
One thing – why can’t I ‘show_post_count’ on your widgets any more?
Yours,
Tom
I’m not able to find the Recent Posts widget either since the most recent upgrade to 0.2
Thats just PERFECT. Before, i wouldn’t think to use any widget in my site but i do now..
This plugin works fine, my site became rapidly rising traffic by installing this plugin, I use wordpress 2.8.5 version, is still working when I upgraded to the new version, thanks
how to hide the widget on homepage?
Hi, great! thanks!
However, any reason why I dont see my LINKS widget anymore listed ?
How can I do?
Thanks
I’m using widgets-reloaded version 0.2 on WordPress 2.9. I’ve noticed that since WP 2.8.6 advanced widgets created by plugin lost ability to save options represented by checkboxes. Apparently WordPress function checked fails to echo proper checked attribute into form code. I’ve replaced the following code for all checkboxed inputs (example from bookmark.php):
with:
and that solved all problems.
Hi Justin,
Would it be safe to assume that you are not interested in supporting widgets-reloaded anymore? Since rather heated argument with ovidiu you didn’t answer any questions here. And that is half a year already. Simple answer yes or no will be appreciated.
Frank
Hey Justin, i was writing in other posts of yours, but today i needed this plugin and i found it on google… thats great, thanks
greetings, nagradne igre
Awesome!! just what I was looking for since three hours!!! uff..
Thank you so much
Hi.. thanks for that amazing plugin.
I want to ask that is it possible to exclude/include some categories from Archives Widget?
I mean i want to show the last 10 posts from only desired catgories in sidebar.
Thanks…
I have the same issue. But Justin has not been here since May 2009, so I think it’s pretty hopeless.
I’ve been here every day after May 2009 as well. It’s just that my comments section shouldn’t be mistaken for a support forum.
I am using hybrid framework in one my blogs.. hireloans.com but i never thought i can get it as a plugin for my other blogs as well ..thanks.
I really like the drop-down option of the standard categories widget but I like the ability to exclude certain categories.
Would be nice if I could have my cake and eat it!
Hey Justin, thanks for the great plugin. I’m getting a PHP warning with the latest update which I was able to patch rather easily. Not sure if it has to do with my setup or not – I’m running 3.0.1 with a multi-domain setup.
The warnign occurs in widget-pages.php, lines 46-48. instead of isset($instance['authors']), i replaced each of those three lines with is_array($instance['authors']) . I don’t know if there’s a deeper problem as to why those values are not arrays as the code expects. But, anyway, this fixes the warning for me. I hope it might help with the next udate.
thanks again!
Just what I was looking for – thanks Justin.
Stupid question, maybe, but how do I get the categories to display as a dropdown instead of a list? There’s no option, currently. I tried looking into the code but being a total n00b, I’m a little terrified of screwing it up royally.
Any help is appreciated!
BTW, thanks a zillion for all your efforts…
Cheers!
I want to just display the parent category and have a drop down list of the child categories. Is this possible?
I dont see the option to have a category dropdown instead of a list.
I’d also like to have a dropdown instead of list for categories.
I would really like the option to have the dropdown again please!
I need a plugin that will show calender and when i click a date of the calender then it will show the post of the pages of the specific category.
But above plugin will helpful for my future task.