Widget Wrangler is a plugin for Wordpress that gives admin a clean interface for managing widgets on a page by page basis.
It's basically Drupal Blocks on every page, with the ability to set the default location of the widgets in specific sidebars.
Widget Wrangler provides widgets as a post type, and gives you the ability to clone existing wordpress widgets.
Now with multiple 'sidebars' (groups of widgets, drupal: regions)!
Screencasts
Each screencast is roughly 5 minutes long
Install
- Upload widget-wrangler to the /wp-content/plugins/ directory
- Activate the plugin through the Plugins menu in WordPress
- Add a new sidebar under the Widgets menu
- Begin adding widgets under the Widgets menu
- Set default widgets on the defaults
- Add the function 'ww_dynamic_sidebar('sidebar_slug');' to your template
FAQ
How do I display my widgets?
You must edit your template files and find any instance of the dynamic_sidebar() function. Replace these functions with ww_dynamic_sidebar('name_of_sidebar')
How can I control the widget's template (HTML)?
In the widget-wrangler directory there is a file named 'widget-template.php'. Copy this file to your theme's root directory and rename it 'widget.php'. You can edit the HTML in the file to have widgets defaultly appear as you want.
Can I use existing wordpress widgets?
Some of them. With this plugin I plan on focusing on the post-Wordpress-3.0 users. Widgets programmed for older versions of wordpress will likely not work.
What does it mean to Clone a widget?
When you clone a wordpress widget, it creates a new widget post in the Widget Wrangler system with the settings for that widget pre-filled in the Advanced Parsing area of the new widget.