[Plugin: Section Widget] Having Difficulties

  • Hi.

    I am having issues trying to get this to do what it is supposed to. I put your section widget into my primary widget area and I am trying to tell it what places to show that widget.

    I tell it to display the section widget on the [Posts Page] and it works but I tried testing other locations too. For example if I tell it to show on [All Tag Archive Pages] a couple things happen after I hit “SAVE” settings. First thing is after I hit “save” it refreshes the widget and then I see that [Selected Tag Archive Pages] also gets check-marked. Okay fine whatever. But when I go to my webpage and click on a tag the section widget doesn’t show up. So the next thing I tried is in the widget settings on the TAG tab I selected a few tags to test. Then once again I go to my webpage and click on a couple of those tags but the section widget still doesn’t show for those tags I selected.

    So here is a full example: I have the section widget added to my primary widget area. I then told the widget to only show on the [Posts Page] and also on [Selected Tag Archive Pages]. Then I went to the TAG tab of your widget settings and said “only show the widget on the Themes tag”.

    When I go to my webpage to see if everything is working I see the section widget on my [Posts Page] which is correct but when I click the tag named “Themes” and it takes me to the tag archives page for “Themes” the section widget does not display.

    EDIT: I tried the same for Categories and your Categories works fine – meaning if I tell it to show the section widget on [Selected Category Archive Pages] and I hit “save” when the widget refreshes it does NOT also check-mark [All Category Archive Pages]. In other words everything is fine and when I actually click on the category I told it to, the widget does show up for that category page.

    It’s just buggy/broke for Tags. If I say [Selected Tag Archive Pages] and hit “save” after refresh [All Tag Archive Pages] ALSO becomes check-marked and vice-versa – if I say show on [All Tag Archive Pages] after I hit “save” [Selected Tag Archive Pages] ALSO becomes check-marked. And no matter what tags I tell it to show the widget on, the widget NEVER shows up on any tag pages.

Viewing 8 replies - 1 through 8 (of 8 total)

  • Hi MAK,

    First of all, thank you for the **detailed** report! You are correct, the behaviors that you have observed are incorrect. I have just pushed a new version of the plugin to fix those embarrassing bugs, which should be available on the WP.org download page within an hour. Thanks again! ??

    Godfrey

    Thread Starter Mark Kehn

    (@mak)

    Hey godfreykfc,

    Thanks for your reply. May I ask you one more question please?

    We have the widgets Recent Posts and Recent comments but instead of using those widgets how do I use your section-tab widget to do the same?

    I want a Recent Posts tab and a Recent Comments tab with each tab showing the proper stuff. What short codes do I use? I even installed Justin Tadlocks plugin “Template Tag ShortCodes” but I don’t find anything there I can use (I don’t think).

    I see people using a tabbed widget for Recent Comments and Posts all the time but I don’t know how to do it without using the individual default built in widgets by WordPress.

    Much appreciated thanks.

    EDIT: Just a feature request – When we click a tab within your section-tab widget whenever we go to another page or refresh the page it always goes back to the first tab, can you make it persistent? Make it so that if I click on the Archives tab and click an archive link, after I get taken to the archive page the tabbed widget will still show the Archive tab instead of it going back to the first tab again?

    Thread Starter Mark Kehn

    (@mak)

    Hey godfreykfc,

    After playing with it some more I find it doesn’t work in regards to your PAGE tab either. That is to say —

    If I tell the widget to NOT show on any PAGES it works.

    But If I tell the widget to show only on PAGE A (from your PAGE tab in settings) it shows on PAGE A but also B C AND D too. So it’s behaving like ALL or nothing, even though it only shows a check-mark on Page A.

    I don’t know if you saw that when you were fixing the TAGS part of it that I mentioned in my first post.

    Anyhow wanted you to know the update you said you pushed through WordPress Extends/Updater never came through yet, I still don’t see a notice to update the plugin.

    Do you have a secondary link we can download directly from you?

    EDIT: Here’s another thing you may find interesting.

    You mention in you notes/faq that people may still need to use Justin’s Widget Logic if they need to hide other plugin widgets. So you are aware that people do use your Section Widget and Widget Logic together.

    Did you know that that don’t play nicely (sometimes?) Here is an example:

    Lets say I have a widget named WIDGET COOLNESS and in the settings area for Section Widget I have everything unchecked. Meaning I told Section Widget plugin not to show WIDGET COOLNESS anywhere in my website. Well, that works. but…

    Now lets say I tell Widget Logic to show WIDGET COOLNESS on three different pages, well it doesn’t work because Section Widget superceeds it and since Section Widget has everything turned off Widget Logic won’t work for it. However…

    If I told Section Widget to show WIDGET COOLNESS on Special Page A and Special Page B – it works but if I then tell Widget Logic to not show it on Special Page B then it doesn’t.

    What I am trying to explain is if Section Widget tells the widget not to show up it wont, regardless of what Widget Logic says but if Section Widget says to show something, after it’s allowed to show Widget Logic can turn around and turn it off.

    Do you get what I mean?

    So anyways – I understand what you intended for Section Widget to do and it sounds great. You were trying to make it easier for us to tell where a widget will and will not show up without having to find the correct php logic to make Widget Logic work. That said, with the quirky behavior and much time spent trying to get Section Widget to work as it says it should, even though I have to find the correct php logic to make Widget Logic work, right now it’s still a lot easier and more importantly — faster to use Widget Logic right now.

    If you get these kinks worked out, I look forward to using Section Widget but for now I will deactivate it. I will check back every now and again for updates to your plugin. I wish you the best.

    MAK

    Thread Starter Mark Kehn

    (@mak)

    Sorry, I meant to say I will still use it for the tabbed widget part of things I just cant use it for my other widgets right now.

    Any chance you can answer my 2nd post here, the one after you first replied to me.

    I would love to be able to have tabbed Recent Posts and tabbed Recent Comments, I just can figure out the php code or short code needed for it.

    Hi MAK, I’ll be going to bed very soon so I’ll just make a few quick notes here and get to the rest tomorrow.

    First of all, something weird is happening with the wordpress plugin repository. For some reason the changes I pushed appeared in the SVN but not the download page. For now, you can grab it from here. I’ll contact the wordpress guys tomorrow to ask about this.

    As for Pages not working, that is really odd. In fact that’s the most used features of the plugin and I just verified it’s working on all of our sites. Are you sure you don’t have “All Pages” checked on the “Special Pages” tab?

    For widget logic, I actually didn’t recommend anyone using it with section widget. However, if you need to use them together, the “correct” way is to check “Everywhere” on Section Widget and define whatever rules you needed in Widget Logic. Alternatively, you may think that the rules of section widget and widget logic are “AND”-ed together, so it actually has to satisfied the rules named in both plugins before it is displayed on the page.

    As for recent posts and comments, the easiest way to do it is actually to show your RSS feed with the RSS Shortcode plugin. If you need more flexibility, I am pretty sure there are other plugins out there, but it’s actually super easy to define your own shortcode too. I will try post a template and some tutorial at my blog tomorrow.

    Godfrey

    (Turns out this is actually a pretty long reply)

    Thread Starter Mark Kehn

    (@mak)

    I downloaded and installed the 3.0.4 version you gave, so thanks.

    Here is the promised tutorial: https://www.chancancode.com/2009/10/06/getting-the-most-out-of-section-widget-writing-shortcodes/

    To get recent posts, I used the PHP shortcode plugin and put a new call to the Loop in there. After futzing with php shortcode I got it to work.

Viewing 8 replies - 1 through 8 (of 8 total)
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