{"id":28,"date":"2009-10-31T23:34:30","date_gmt":"2009-10-31T16:34:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.randomlog.org\/?p=28"},"modified":"2024-01-19T07:52:00","modified_gmt":"2024-01-19T00:52:00","slug":"to-widgetize-or-not-to-widgetize","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/randomlog.org\/blog\/to-widgetize-or-not-to-widgetize","title":{"rendered":"To widgetize or not to widgetize"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"http:\/\/widgets.wordpress.com\/\">Widget<\/a> is a good thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Widgets are things you can put in your WordPress blog&#8217;s sidebar without knowing how to edit a web page.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">As it said, it&#8217;s good to have a widgetized sidebar if you don&#8217;t know how to edit a web page.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But let&#8217;s see:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">A developer said:<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<ol class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><span style=\"color: #ff0000;\">A widget creates additional processes on the server, no matter how efficient the code is.<\/span><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><span style=\"color: #ff0000;\">Developing a widgetized sidebar element takes much longer than hardcoding it.<\/span><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><span style=\"color: #ff0000;\">There&#8217;s no way a widget can integrate smoothly into all available WordPress themes.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">While from a user&#8217;s point of view:<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<ol class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><span style=\"color: #008000;\">It&#8217;s nice that the sidebar can be edited from within the admin section.<\/span><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><span style=\"color: #ff0000;\">Almost all of the widgets I downloaded don&#8217;t display correctly on my <em>custom theme<\/em>.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Is widget really necessary?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">If you ask me, no! (at least for now)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><span style=\"color: #008000;\">Unless I need to rearrange my sidebar elements EVERYDAY, it&#8217;s better to do it directly in the template file.<\/span><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><span style=\"color: #008000;\">Even if I develop a sidebar according to <a href=\"http:\/\/automattic.com\/code\/widgets\/themes\/\">standards<\/a>, most widgets will still need some (code) adjustments before they can be displayed correctly.<br \/>\n<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I&#8217;m not saying that widgets are bad. In fact, I love technological improvements like this that can make people&#8217;s lives easier. But for now, I don&#8217;t go with it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Widget is a good thing. Widgets are things you can put in your WordPress blog&#8217;s sidebar without knowing how to edit a web page. As it said, it&#8217;s good to have a widgetized sidebar if you don&#8217;t know how to edit a web page. But let&#8217;s see: A developer said: While from a user&#8217;s point [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[5],"class_list":["post-28","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-wordpress"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/randomlog.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/randomlog.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/randomlog.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/randomlog.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/randomlog.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28"}],"version-history":[{"count":27,"href":"https:\/\/randomlog.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":736,"href":"https:\/\/randomlog.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28\/revisions\/736"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/randomlog.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/randomlog.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/randomlog.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}