WordPress 2.2: Widgets!
WordPress: Wednesday, May 16th, 2007
WordPress 2.2 | Release Notes | Download
The long awaited new release of WordPress is finally here, I think like a month late but the way they’ve been churning out updates we’ll let it slide. The big new feature in this version is Widgets. They’ve basically integrated the existing Widget Plugin into the software itself. They had talked about having Tags too but I guess they didn’t work out, I’ve read they can be pretty tricky, there is a plugin but I personally was waiting for an official release with WordPress. Basically they allow you to tag posts with words for grouping them or finding them in the blogosphere, rather than having to make such a junkyard of categories.
I meant to Widget-ready the ComicPress theme but it was all my time just getting it finished up and running smoothly as it was. It will allow people to add and remove stuff to the sidebar easily from the WordPress control panel. There’s just a bit of editing to do to the sidebar.php and functions.php file. If you are anxious you can read how to convert the theme here. Although if you are that capable I don’t know there is really a need to use Widgets in the first place.
I see them mainly as a way for people not too familiar with theme editing to customize their sidebar a bit. I can make the existing elements like the calendar, the previous 5 comics, and such into Widgets, then people can easily move them around or remove ones they don’t want. Probably be available in a ComicPress 2.1 update as there are some other little changes and tweaks I’d like to make to the theme, but I’ll provide info on updating your current theme for Widgets before then.
