As I recently mentioned, I finally made the switch from Movable Type 4 to WordPress, as the software behind this blog, and I’m very glad I did. After spending quite a bit of time trying to figure out how to iron out a few bugs from the new template that I’m using (Cutline), I finally got things to work – tags are now showing up properly (due to a bug in Cutline), random images are now appearing (again, there seems to have been some type of bug in the program which required quite a bit of tweaking to get them to work), and I finally just figured out how to create “widgets.’ Widgets are very small clips of code that allow all of the cool things on the sides of this blog to work – things like the search box, calendar, links to various places, and even the local weather conditions. To be honest, it took far more time to figure out how to create widgets than was necessary as the documentation for WordPress on that matter was about as clear as mud. When it finally dawned on me how to create them, they were actually extremely easy (and quick) to create.Again, as all of the various discussions on the matter (not only on the WordPress site but also on other sites that offer snippets of code that could be used) were very confusing, I thought I’d post the instructions here for my own future reference; here goes:
- Open up the WordPress control panel/dashboard (sorry, but only I can open mine)
- Click on the “Presentation” tab
- Open up the “Widgets” tab that should now appear.
- Scroll down the page and click on that dropdown box under “textbox widgets” and select the next number that appears (for example, “1” is set as the default so select “2”). That will create a new box under “Available Widgets.”
- Click and drag that new box to the appropriate sidebar.
- Double click on that box and a new window will show up.
- Enter the widget’s heading in the top box on the new window.
- Enter the code into the bottom box on the same window.
- Click on “Save changes” which appears on the right side of the screen.
- You’re done!
Why there aren’t simple instructions on how to do this in WordPress’ documentation or elsewhere is beyond me. It only takes a matter of a minute or so to create a widget. The only other question that others might have is figuring out where the code for the widgets come from. Of course, it is quite simple to create your own but there are also many sources available on the net: I was able to easily find code to use for the weather, random pictures that I’ve posted on Flickr account, and even books from my personal library that have been cataloged using LibraryThing.com. Interestingly, WordPress and others claim that Javascript (a programming language that’s used on many/most web sites to create simple things) won’t work on WordPress but I’ve found that’s not true. Some of the widgets on this site use Javascript and seem to be working just fine. For example, if your books are cataloged by LibraryThing.com (a free service for bookoholics to keep track of their library), all that needs to be done is to go to their site, find their code for used in widgets, and then cut and paste it as noted in my instructions above. Can’t get any easier than that.
Finally, I’ve now added photos that I wanted to use in my headers for this and my KAP (kite aerial photography) blog so now I can finally get back to blogging instead of dealing with all of the behind the scenes nonsense. I’ve used photos of places I’ve been that I would love to go back to – the Grand Canyon, the Painted Desert/Pertrified Forest, on a harbor cruise looking out at Catalina Island, and Tent Rocks National Monument located southwest of Santa Fe in New Mexico. Of course, now that I’ve figured out how to change the random header code to display more photos (found in the header.php file), I’ll add more in the future.
The only thing remaining is that I still cannot find is a good plug-in (another snippet of code that can be used for all kinds of things) in order to post my book reviews, with links to my Amazon account, on my book review blog. About the only thing that still works is a plug-in that works (and not very well) with MT. Hopefully, someone will come up with something for that in the near future.