Managing Widgets in WordPress 2.8
June 23rd, 2009 by MattThe new widget management in WordPress 2.8 is greatly improved. You can drag widgets from the available widgets area to any widgetized sidebar, and edit the settings with a click of the little arrow. There’s no more annoying “Save” button for you to have to remember to click either.
The only problem? As soon as you drop a widget into a sidebar, it appears on your blog. That means one or two visitors might see an unconfigured widget before you have a chance to edit and save the settings. (This was brought to my attention recently by WP Weekly.)
Luckily, there’s a workaround…
Below the “Available Widgets” section, there’s a box marked “Inactive Widgets.” It serves as a holding ground for widgets you want to temporarily remove from display, but don’t want to reset their settings.
What you want to do is drag a widget from the Active Widgets box to the Inactive Widgets, where you will be able to edit the widget settings. Next, drag the widget to the sidebar. It takes a little bit of extra effort, but if you don’t want unconfigured widgets showing on your blog, it might be worth it to you.
Thanks for shedding some light on this. I wasn’t even aware of this problem, so it is nice to know about both the problem and a solution.
It might or not be that big of a problem for everyone. But if you have a fairly high-traffic blog, and you add a widget that might act funny if unconfigured, someone might see something weird when they load a page.
It might or not be that big of a problem for everyone. But if you have a fairly high-traffic blog, and you add a widget that might act funny if unconfigured, someone might see something weird when they load a page.
Still, not a bad thing to know.