Widget is a good thing.
Widgets are things you can put in your WordPress blog’s sidebar without knowing how to edit a web page.
As it said, it’s good to have a widgetized sidebar if you don’t know how to edit a web page.
But let’s see:
A developer said:
- A widget creates additional processes on the server, no matter how efficient the code is.
- Developing a widgetized sidebar element takes much longer than hardcoding it.
- There’s no way a widget can integrate smoothly into all available WordPress themes.
While from a user’s point of view:
- It’s nice that the sidebar can be edited from within the admin section.
- Almost all of the widgets I downloaded don’t display correctly on my custom theme.
Is widget really necessary?
If you ask me, no! (at least for now)
- Unless I need to rearrange my sidebar elements EVERYDAY, it’s better to do it directly in the template file.
- Even if I develop a sidebar according to standards, most widgets will still need some (code) adjustments before they can be displayed correctly.
I’m not saying that widgets are bad. In fact, I love technological improvements like this that can make people’s lives easier. But for now, I don’t go with it.
It takes a minute to rearrange sidebar elements, less than an hour to make structural or formatting changes. But, it could take hours to develop a widgetized sidebar element just to make its formatting and structure editable from the admin section.
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