Yes, you can add widgets through plug-ins the same way you add them through themes. So move the widget code from your functions.php file and drop it inside a custom plug-in. You’ll get the same functionality without the need to modify your theme.
This code detects whether a title has been set, and if not, it changes the before_widget argument. add_filter( ‘widget_display_callback’, ‘wpse4213_widget_display_callback’, 10, 3 ); function wpse4213_widget_display_callback( $instance, $widget, $args ) { if ( empty( $instance[‘title’] ) ) { $args[‘before_widget’] = ‘<div class=”container”><div class=”content”>’; $widget->widget( $args, $instance ); return false; } return $instance; } This code works … Read more
Sidebar functionality doesn’t handle wrapping container, you need to add that on template level. Here is example markup of sidebar-primary.php template (taken from Hybrid theme and simplified a bit): if ( is_active_sidebar( ‘primary’ ) ) : ?> <div id=”primary” class=”sidebar aside”> <?php dynamic_sidebar( ‘primary’ ); ?> </div><!– #primary .aside –> <?php endif; ?> Also I … Read more
yes. preset widgets: Possible to preset a widget’s contents via a plugin script? post your widget code here if you need specific instructions
Check out this post I wrote on the wordpress.org board… it has some functioning code you can work from: http://wordpress.org/support/topic/how-to-first-and-last-css-classes-for-sidebar-widgets
For starters see Site Design and Layout in Codex (official documentation wiki). Overall your question is somewhat broad. Specifics will depend on theme you are going to modify; what content you want to use; how easily editable you want it to be; etc.
Most themes will have a default set of widgets that appear when you don’t add any widgets yourself (using the widget page in admin). You can normally just drag the widgets that were “hard-coded” into the correct sidebar, and all should be ok.
Better to use a query loop to show posts, which is a modifed version of the main WP loop. This query loop won’t interfere with the main WP loop and can be used mutiple times in a sidebar or post/page with php execution enabled. Use a php widget in your sidebar: WordPress › PHP Code … Read more
you can make it a plugin and put it in the plugins folder, or you can make it part of a theme and put it in the theme’s functions.php file.
I’m almost sure there is no way to do that (server side) without hacking core files, bu luckly i know a little jQuery and i’ve come up with this hackish function that does the job just fine: function widget_logic_hack(){ global $pagenow; if ($pagenow == ‘widgets.php’){ ?> <script> function hack_logic(){ jQuery(‘input[id$=”widget_logic”]’).each(function() { if (jQuery(this).val().length === 0){}else{ … Read more