The Widget Pack is one of the more popular extensions for Connections because it adds many useful widgets that can be added to the theme’s sidebar. I’ve been working on a massive update to all the currently available widgets, implementing all the most requested features. Here’s an overview of the new features you can expect when Widget Pack 2.0 is released.
The two most requested features were to be able to hide the entry count and hide empty category (categories) which have no entries assigned to them. Both of these can be done now and it’s as easy as simply checking a box.
The next most requested feature is to be able to exclude specific categories. This can now be done but first…
You can choose to display “All” categories, which is how the widget currently works, or you can choose “Include or exclude specific categories.” or choose to only “Display specific category parent.” Depending on which option you choose you’ll be presented with a different set of options.
When you choose to display all categories you can choose to limit how “deep” into the category tree to display. By default this is set to
0
which means the entire category tree will be shown. Setting this to 1
would show only the top level root parent categories. Setting this to 2
would show only the top level root parent category and their immediate children categories and setting it to 3
would show the children’s children categories and so on and so on.
Now, as requested, not only can you chose to exclude specific categories you also choose to display only specific categories. When you choose this option you’ll be presented with a searchable category drop down which can be used select the categories.
- If you choose the exclude categories, this will also exclude the categories descendants.
- If you choose to include specific categories, only the categories that are chosen will be displayed. The children categories, if there are any, will automatically be excluded.
Lastly you can choose to a display only a specific category parent and whether or not only its children should be displayed or all of its descendants. This feature will be useful to those who want to show just a specific branch in the category tree.
Since the category widget is multiple instance compatible, meaning you can use it more than once in a single sidebar or in multiple sidebars at once or both, you can configure each instance uniquely to get the display just the way you want. You could even use a plugin like Widget Logic or Conditional Widgets or Restrict Widgets (after this bug is fixed) to get really fine control of when and how the category widget is displayed.
All the other widgets also received significant feature enhancements as well as the inclusion of several new widgets. I’ll be going over these in upcoming posts.
Can you point me to an example of a site where the Widget pack’s Search function is working?
I like the functionality of the search you showed for the Slim Plus upgrade, and its demo on NO CORKAGE FEES. But I don’t particularly want the “look” of Slim Plus, just the search function.
When will you release Widget Pack 2.0?
@ Gizmo
Sorry for the late reply! I didn’t notice I had a few comments needing review.
I do not have an exact ETA… it got put off a little.
My test install has nearly 1700 categories and adding category selection options to all the widgets made the Widget admin page so slow it was nearly unusable, taking well over a minute to load. I’m sure most do not have that many categories but I know some do so I need to make sure it performs well.
That said…
Connections version 8.2 included under the hood code changes that dramatically improved performance with working with a large number of categories. This improvement is finally being extended to the code that renders the category drop downs. The Widgets admin page that took over a minute to display, now it only takes a couple seconds.
This improvement even benefits everyone who purchased a template which features a category drop down, like cMap. As an example of this improvement… on my dev install with almost 1700 categories; page load time decreased to 1.5sec from 4–5sec and uses 300K or so less memory. These gains are huge and I’m very happy with them!
When will this release… this week sometime. It’ll be Connections version 8.2.4.
This looks a great feature: it’s just what I need. Can you give an idea of when it will be available?
@ Andy
No ETA yet, please see my reply to @Gizmo for more details.
All,
Widget Pack 2.0 update has just been released! I’m still working on the blog post and product page but the update is available now.