I have been several versions of Wordpress behind for a little while and, with this blog, have just caught up. My verdict? Widgets are pretty cool. Having said that it seems clear that the creators of widgets have missed a trick. Why stop with the sidebar?

Widgets give you control over the layout and contents of your sidebar, but there is no reason why you can’t use them to control other parts of your site. For example, in just ten minutes I was able to convert my home page to give me control over most of the layout. Now I am going to explain how.

Register a second sidebar

In the functions.php file, in my theme folder, I have now registered two sidebars. One is controlling my footer, and the other the content of my home page;

if ( function_exists('register_sidebar') ) {
    register_sidebar(array(
	'name' => 'footer',
        'before_widget' => '<div class="segment">',
        'after_widget' => '</div>',
        'before_title' => '<h3>',
        'after_title' => '</h3>',
    ));
	register_sidebar(array(
	'name' => 'home page contents',
        'before_widget' => '',
        'after_widget' => '',
        'before_title' => '',
        'after_title' => '',
    ));
 
}

I’ve given then nice names so I recognise them in the admin console.

Create and register the home page content widget

Again in functions.php, I have produced a function to output the standard contents of the home page loop without any change. The example has a placeholder for simplicity:

function widget_home_page_content(){
 
?>
	<?php if (have_posts()) : ?>
 
		<?php while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>
 
		*** Loop Contents ****
 
	<?php else : ?>
 
 
 
	<?php endif; ?>
<?php
 
}

I have then registered this function as a new widget

register_sidebar_widget('Home Page Content',widget_home_page_content);

Pretty simple so far right?

Convert your index to a sidebar

I have replaced the Wordpress loop in my index file, with a call to the second sidebar. My entire index file now looks like this:

<?php get_header(); ?>
 
	<div id="content">
	<?php if ( function_exists('dynamic_sidebar') ) { dynamic_sidebar(2); } ?>
	</div>
 
<?php get_sidebar(); ?>
 
<?php get_footer(); ?>

I can now start to produce and use widgets to place content above and below the contents of my home page, without messing with the theme. I could even go further and break the loop into parts, giving even more control over the precise way posts are displayed, or make a single page theme, using widgets to control the layout.

I’m just wondering how far it is possible go using only widgets.

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