The widget operates in a different scope than the functions.php. You could use two different approaches to get around that. Make the variable global (put it into the top scope): // functions.php $GLOBALS[‘var_name’] = ‘hello’; // widget echo $GLOBALS[‘var_name’]; But that is risky: any other script can change the variable now accidentally, and it is … Read more
Huh. It had never actually occurred to me to use widget instance as cache. I hadn’t ever seen such implementation either. This is quite an original idea, and as such it is hard to accurately point out benefits and issues with implementation. For starters update() doesn’t actually save anything, it just used as check for … Read more
You should do it with after_setup_theme action: function remove_inactive_widgets() { $sidebars_widgets = get_option( ‘sidebars_widgets’ ); $sidebars_widgets[‘wp_inactive_widgets’] = array(); update_option( ‘sidebars_widgets’, $sidebars_widgets ); } add_action( ‘after_setup_theme’, ‘remove_inactive_widgets’ );
This is a known issue and will be taken care of soon, assuming you are using the “Twenty Eleven” theme: see this link. The bundled Twenty Eleven theme has some styling issues for pages with sidebars (See Trac ticket #36510)
Thank you Dave Romsey and Mark Kaplun for pointing out about not using HTML ID in WordPress Widget. I finally find a solution for my need. Solution: We need to add a preset variables into all of the 3 functions (widget, form, update). In my codes, they are called “spotlight_image_link1, spotlight_image_link2, etc”. Then in the … Read more
I found an easy way to pass a JavaScript variable to PHP variable. Please note that this method works in WordPress version 4.7.2, and only specifically on Widget. I wrote a lot of comments to try to explain what each line did. If you have a better solution, please share with us! Solution: Create a … Read more
This plugin might be the easy way. http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/add-widgets-to-page/ But for a scratch method… Look into Theme Twenty-Ten’s functions.php file and find where the dynamic sidebars are registered. It looks like this: <?php function twentyten_widgets_init() { // Area 1, located at the top of the sidebar. register_sidebar( array( ‘name’ => __( ‘Primary Widget Area’, ‘twentyten’ ), … Read more
I don’t think there is anything specifically for this. You might want to look at the plugin code to find calls to get_option() and see what keys they are using, then browse the DB table wp_options with phpMyAdmin (or whatever) and grab the associated values. Without specific support from the plugin this can be iffy … Read more
There are quite a few plugins tagged books in official repository. A lot of them seems to pull covers from services like Amazon, which may or may not fit your needs. If you want to simply display some self-hosted images with links and basic categorizing/sorting, personally I like to use Links for such.
dynamic_sidebar() calls wp_get_sidebars_widgets() to get the list of all sidebars and their widgets. This output is filtered through sidebars_widgets, so you can modify it to add or remove widgets. This array only contains widget IDs, so you need to register the widget instance too (it should end up in the global $wp_registered_widgets array). I think … Read more