In case you haven’t lived behind the moon for the last two months, you probably heard of the so-called WordPress Widgets. It was introduced on wordpress.com to give users the ability to customize the sidebar to their needs. From there on, they could decide what they want to have on the sidebar, in what order, with options and so on, simply by dragging the widgets on the sidebar. In that time it was absolutely amazing, since wordpress.com doesn’t give you much control over your blog there.
The day before yesterday, Matt and the others released WordPress Widgets as a plugin, announcing it as the biggest step in theme customizing. And although I really want to dislike it…I can’t.
See, I’m a guy who don’t like to get said, what I can do and what not. With this plugin, I have indeed the option to customize my sidebar, but I’m limited to the widgets provided with the theme. Of course, you can develop your own plugins, but doing that for every new theme I want to try? No way! And I’m pretty sure that they will be compatibilty problems with themes and plugins developed by others.
I’m also a guy who likes to fiddle around with the code. The typical sidebar features categories, archives, search functionality, maybe recent postings and so on. But try to implement a greater thing into it, like flickr pictures, a tag cloud or whatever you want. With the plugin enabled, you only have the option of doing it through other widgets, because you can’t integrate it between other widgets. Again, no way.
But hey, after all, it’s a plugin. You, the user, have the option of en- or disabling it, just how you like it. It’s a great feature for every blogger who doesn’t want to hassle around with the code, who just want to write. But again, these users are better be hosted on wordpress.com… I’ll prefer to have it disabled. And I’m pretty much sure, that 2 out of 3 WordPress users are thinking the same way. It is a step forward, but not as big as the developers think.
If all goes well, this feature will be integrated into the standard WordPress distribution
Automattic » Widgetizing themes
This worries me a little bit. I hope that the developers won’t make the failure of implementing it as a must-have, instead they should leave it as an option. If they really want to tell me who I have to customize my sidebar, I’ll guess I have to find another blogging platform… sounds exaggerated, I know, but these are my thoughts.
Das kann ja was werden, musst du nicht lernen?
well, I’d rather not call Sidebar Widgets the holy grale, but they are indeed a huge leap ahead, especially for all those blog users out there who are not webdevelopers. Imagine a person who just wants to write a blog and who doesn’t have the slightest clue of sophisticated HTML and PHP coding and stuff like that. These persons will either stick with Kubrick or will have to ask others to help them in terms of customization of their blog – or they will have a look for themes which are capable of Widgets support.
So, in terms of customization and ease of use, this Widgets stuff is way ahead anything else. Additionally, a good and experienced theme developer will take your thoughts into account. First, there’d be a usual sidebar, which would be displayed if no Widgets plugin is present (or unconfigured), and second, there’d be an additional portion of code in the sidebar.php which would include a separate file (let’s call it custom-sidebar.php), where code fiddlers like you and me would receive the chance to use Widgets and self-customized sidebar contents at the same time.
I suppose you know both K2 and Binary Blue themes, which both behave exactly that way that I have described above in their latest releases. And that’s for sure – both themes define new standards regarding theme development, so many other themes will follow their design patterns really soon, and then Widgets support will rise to be an important knowout criterium when the “which theme shall I use” decision is made.
Like I said, Widgets are indeed a good option for bloggers who just want to write and don’t care about customizing their blogs that much. But as you said, K2 and Binary Blue are already supporting Widgets, Kubrick will feature it with the next WordPress release, other popular themes (Blix and Sirius for example) will follow very soon.
Maybe I’m too pessimistic, but I guess in a not so distant future, there will be no “alternative” sidebar included with the theme, everything will be adjusted through widgets. And that’s the point where you, the developer of the theme, put the control into the hand of widgets. Although I hope that this will never happen.
well, jeriko, at least regarding BB I can assure you, I won’t leave sidebar customization solely to an external plugin. ;) There’s still too much left a widget can’t be solution for, so there’ll be always use for that custom-sidebar.php file I’ve mentioned above.