Widget Magic – Widgetize anything in your WordPress theme!

The Widget Magic is out: I published a great guide teaching how you can add widgets anywhere and everywhere in your WordPress theme.

If you are a blogger most likely you are familiar with the most popular blogging tool, WordPress (WP) and its feature called widgets. In the unlikely case that you never heard about widgets, in WP they are small blocks of information that can be placed – usually – in the sidebar by drag’n'drop. If you look at the right, on the sidebar of this blog the group of links (My websites) or the group of square ads – are put there by widgets.

Everybody loves widgets because you don’t have to edit your template files (like the sidebar.php of your theme) every time you want to make some changes. The widgets are very convenient way to organize the content of your sidebar. In some themes the developers have placed widget areas even in the footer!

However, I have heard many times bloggers talking about their dream of being able to have widgets anywhere in their blog. Well, their dream just became true. I put together an illustrated guide to teach WP users how to add widget area anywhere in their blog.

You can download it here: Widget Magic – the widegtizer

Wish me luck! I hope this tutorial will become popular among WP users. If you downloaded it, tell me how did it work for you? Pimp your widgets everywhere!

P.S. If you know what WF is and you are member there – watch for a special discounted price!

8 Responses to “Widget Magic – Widgetize anything in your WordPress theme!”

dingledow on February 7th, 2010

I was literally just wanting something about widgets – I really need to know more about them. This could be good – I’ll take a look!
Eric Graudins on February 7th, 2010

If this is written like your previous tutorials, it’s sure to be a great guide to us dumbos who need help when poking around in the innards of WordPress.
cheers,
Eric G.
Richlefty on February 7th, 2010

Istvan, I am really looking forward to this. I think it will help me tremendously in what I am trying to do with my blog!
admin on February 7th, 2010

The first commenter wasn’t from my list, so there is still one spot left!
Datapike on February 7th, 2010

Thanks for the opportunity for a free guide! I’m looking forward to reading it!
admin on February 7th, 2010

Datapike, you will get the third copy. Thanks for the comment.
Istvan Horvath on February 8th, 2010

For anybody else not understanding the comments above:

I’ve sent an email to my list and offered 3 free review copies for the first three commenters here.

All the copies are gone now – sorry guys.

Of course, you can still post your comments and questions.
Eric Graudins on February 11th, 2010

Widgets are magic little boxes that live in some wordpress themes, which can be easily rearranged and edited to change the content and layout of your blog.

Unfortunately, some themes don’t support widgets. Or maybe they support them, but you want to put them in other places than the sidebars – which is where they usually live.

If so, Istvan’s new book “Widget Magic” is for you. He clearly explains what widgets are, and how they work, and then goes on to give you examples of how to widgetify (Is that a word ? Well, it is now! ) any area of your blog.

A sample theme is provided with the book, and Istvan gives “follow along” examples of adding widgets to a single post template, the footer, and the category/archive templates of the sample theme.

Although Istvan stresses that this is not for raw beginners, I believe that a beginner would learn a lot as they work step by step through the examples. (It might take them a while though)

To widgetify your template you’ll need to be able to identify and edit your theme files, and upload modified files to your server with FTP.

This book has shown me how to do something that I’ve always wondered about. I thought it would be too hard. Turns out it isn’t.

regards,
Eric G.