The Widget Pack has been completely rewritten from the ground up to be faster and far more flexible. The changelog really does not do this update justice. Read the in depth feature preview post about the new Category Widget to get an idea of just how big of an update this is.
New feature highlights…
Probably the most important but not visible improvement is the performance boost. All the widgets now use what is called fragment caching. Without going into great detail this means the HTML for the widgets are built once and then served from a cache anytime they are needed. This reduces server load, response time, database queries and the memory required. So the cache version is never out of date, it is recreated once a day or any time you update an entry or change a widget setting.
Include or exclude entries from selected categories and whether or not the entries must be in of of the selected included categories.
Show the entry image, logo, date or none. (The date option is not available in the Anniversaries Today widget or Birthdays Today widget).
Control the name format.
An option to display the name as a link to the entries profile page or not.
Decide whether or not if the widget should be displayed if there are no entries to display.
You can also decide the number of entries to limit the results to and in the Upcoming Anniversaries and Upcoming Birthdays widget ou can set how many days to look ahead for anniversaries and birthdays.
NOTE: At time of this writing the product page for the Widget Pack product page has not yet been updated.
Changelog
- FEATURE: Complete rewrite.
- FEATURE: All widgets can be used as shortcodes.
- FEATURE: Category Widget – Option to define which categories to include or exclude.
- FEATURE: Category Widget – Option to display a specific category children categories.
- FEATURE: Category Widget – Option to limit the category level depth to display.
- FEATURE: Category Widget – Option to show the number of entries assigned to the category.
- FEATURE: Category Widget – Option to show or hide empty categories.
- FEATURE: Anniversary/Birthday – Limit entries to specific categories and whether the entry must be within all selected categories or not.
- FEATURE: Anniversary/Birthday – Exclude entries assigned to specific categories.
- FEATURE: Anniversary/Birthday – Whether or not to display the entry image or logo or none.
- FEATURE: Anniversary/Birthday – Option to control the format of the name.
- FEATURE: Anniversary/Birthday – Option to link to the entry profile page or not.
- FEATURE: Anniversary/Birthday – Option to display the widget or not if there are no birthdays/anniversaries today.
- FEATURE: Anniversary/Birthday – Option to define the “No results” message.
- FEATURE: Anniversary/Birthday – Option to limit the max number of entries to display.
- FEATURE: Upcoming Anniversary/Upcoming Birthday – Limit entries to specific categories and whether the entry must be within all selected categories or not.
- FEATURE: Upcoming Anniversary/Upcoming Birthday – Exclude entries assigned to specific categories.
- FEATURE: Upcoming Anniversary/Upcoming Birthday – Whether or not to display the entry date or image or logo or none.
- FEATURE: Upcoming Anniversary/Upcoming Birthday – Option to control the format of the name.
- FEATURE: Upcoming Anniversary/Upcoming Birthday – Option to link to the entry profile page or not.
- FEATURE: Upcoming Anniversary/Upcoming Birthday – Option to display the widget or not if there are no birthdays/anniversaries today.
- FEATURE: Upcoming Anniversary/Upcoming Birthday – Option to define the “No results” message.
- FEATURE: Upcoming Anniversary/Upcoming Birthday – Option to limit the max number of days to look ahead for upcoming birthdays/anniversaries.
- FEATURE: Recently Added/ Recently Modified – Limit entries to specific categories and whether the entry must be within all selected categories or not.
- FEATURE: Recently Added/ Recently Modified – Exclude entries assigned to specific categories.
- FEATURE: Recently Added/ Recently Modified – Whether or not to display the entry date or image or logo or none.
- FEATURE: Recently Added/ Recently Modified – Option to control the format of the name.
- FEATURE: Recently Added/ Recently Modified – Option to link to the entry profile page or not.
- FEATURE: Recently Added/ Recently Modified – Option to limit the max number of entries to display.
- TWEAK: Convert code to singleton pattern.
- TWEAK: Break out each widget into its own file.
- TWEAK: Prevent direct access of widgets.
- TWEAK: Add blank index.php files.
- TWEAK: Remove use of PHP short tag.
- TWEAK: Widgets now use the core template engine.
- OTHER: Update plugin header.
- OTHER: Add license.txt.
- OTHER: Add gpl.txt.
- OTHER: Change changelog.txt file name case.
- DEV: Add .editorconfig file.
- DEV: Add phpStorm to .gitignore.
- DEV: Add .jshintrc
Hi Steven,
2.0 has ‘An option to display the name as a link to the entries profile page or not.’
Anyway to link to custom pages(sorted by categories)? I have my business’s listed only by which state they are in. I’m not using individual profile pages.
I had a looksy but see any way in this updated widget?
Thanks.
@ bobbyau
Sorry, but the only way to do this would probably for you to remove the link to entry option and add a custom link text field option, than when set, wraps the name of the entry in a link to your custom page. It’d take less than an hour to make that type of change. Hope what I said makes sense!