Freaky Trigger’s WordPress Setup

Widget Logic

FT had a complex sidebar, but I decided to ‘widgetise’ it when Steve updated the theme in early 2008. To keep some of the special widgets appearing only when needed, I wrote a plugin to extend the functionality of widgets. Widget Logic allows widgets to appear or not depending on standard WP conditional tags, such as is_home() and is_single() and so on.

If you want to contact me about it you should address yourself to the WordPress org directory and perhaps post on the forum there. Or you can leave a comment here, below. PLEASE READ THE FAQ AND OTHER NOTES in the WordPress plugin directory first though.

If you find Widget Logic useful to you, then you could consider a small donation to Cancer Research UK – click ‘Donate’ on the widget over to the right there –>

VIDEO TUTORIAL! Popup or view on YouTube a screencast by Daryl Lozupone. Thanks to him.

Podcast Channels

Podcast Channels is a plugin that augments WP’s RSS feed with some extra elements, mostly in the ‘itunes’ namespace. It works with existing features of WP (auto-enclosures and the media library) to make a simple way to podcast, and allows different metadata in different RSS feeds – you can have as many channels as there are categories, tags, even blog authors.

Like a lot of people I found PodPress increasingly frustrating to use around WP2.6. I still see lots of people using it, but I found it was interfering with too many aspects of WP – wysiwyg editing, the media library, and so on. But there were only two things it did that I liked – show download stats, and allow multiple podcasts on a blog with their own rss and iTunes metadata. So i wrote a couple of plugins to target just those functions.

(I may release the stats plugin some day, but it’s nothing special, a bit clunky, and I really don’t want to support it.)

Freaky Trigger Theme

This was designed by Steve Mannion @ base58.com

Plugins FT uses

wow, look at all of them. FT salutes you


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  1. Theodore Marvel † on 4 October 2011 #

    Thanks for the plugins, I’ll add them to my lists.

  2. Gehaktballen maken † on 15 October 2011 #

    thank you for the helpfull plugin;) i am using it for my blog gehaktballen maken

  3. Eric on 21 October 2011 #

    Not sure if this is an issue or not but when I use
    !is_search() || !is_404()
    widgets appear on both Search and 404 pages. Though, if I use
    !is_search() && !is_404()
    widgets do not appear on either of the 404 or Search pages. Weird, no?

  4. Alan not logged in † on 22 October 2011 #

    no, not weird! that’s exactly right.

    the first one, not search OR not 404, will ALWAYS be true on every page (will only be true if a page is both 404 and search!)

    the second one, not search AND not 404, will only be true when the page is not a 404 and not a search.

  5. Ashley † on 15 November 2011 #

    Hello,
    Please could you help me with something, as I find it quite confusion.
    OK, so I don’t want a widget to appear in a certain category… I have done that successfully with the following:

    !is_category(19)

    But obviously that is only for the “category”… This does not apply to the “posts” within that category.

    What would be the complete code to block the widget within both the category and every post in that particular category?

    Thank you.

  6. Alan not logged in † on 15 November 2011 #

    you are after a !’d variation on the “How do I get a widget to appear both on a category page and on single posts within that category?” in the FAQ

    http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/widget-logic/faq/

  7. Simon Booton-Mander † on 3 December 2011 #

    Hi Freaky Trigger,
    I have widget logic running and love it, it works a treat. But I am stumped for a tag for the homepage. The home page dose not seem to have a name or tag, could you suggest a tag that will keep one of my widgets form showing on the homepage please?

    Many thanks,
    Simon.

  8. wrsowner † on 28 December 2011 #

    @Simon Booton-Mander – use the following:

    !is_front_page()

    will show the targeted widget everywhere but the designated home page (or front page setting of the WP site).

    hth.

  9. Justin on 3 January 2012 #

    I have a question. How to I target a page that I setup in wp to display my blog posts. I have a page for that and a specific page for my home page. I tried both is_post() and is_page() with the page id and the slug, neither of which seemed to work.

    Thanks!

  10. Alan not logged in † on 3 January 2012 #

    http://codex.wordpress.org/Conditional_Tags#The_Main_Page

  11. Derry † on 3 January 2012 #

    I updated Widget Logic this morning and my site immediately started giving a 500 internal server error. Had to remove it manually. Site OK again now. Would love to use the plugin but it’s causing problems!

  12. Alan not logged in † on 3 January 2012 #

    try again – it might have been a partial download or something. i’ve had about 5000 downloads (of the recent 0.51 update) so far, and most people are feeding back positively.

  13. Eve Kurzer † on 14 January 2012 #

    Hi I have the following show up on my sidebar:

    Primary Sidebar Widget Area

    This is the Primary Sidebar Widget Area. You can add content to this area by visiting your Widgets Panel and adding new widgets to this area.

    I have the following formula on the widgets I don’t want appearing: !is_page( array ( ‘Find a Spa’, ‘Find a Class’, ‘Find Yoga’, ‘Get a Facial’, ‘Get a Massage’, ‘Editorial Calendar’, ‘Spas Near You’ ) )

    Please advise what I should do to have the widgets not appear. Thank you.

    The page: http://spadora.net/yoga/

  14. admin on 15 January 2012 #

    by the sound of it no widgets are appearing. it is common for a theme to have default text when there are no widgets, and in this case the “This is the Primary Sidebar Widget Area…” text is that default text.

    If you want rid of that text your options are to alter the theme or to make a single widget appear – one that might be minimal in content/appearance

  15. Grace Visconti † on 25 January 2012 #

    I am having the same problem on my site. How do you alter the theme to get rid of that text especially if my text is not showing up there?

  16. Braudis † on 31 January 2012 #

    I’m perplexed. I’ve successfully used your great plugin up until now. No problems. I updated today and not only did all my widgets disappear (including those that were inactive and required editing) but all of my sidebars and new widget areas that I created. It’s not the theme (atahualpa). Is this an example of fixing something that (to me anyway) wasn’t broken? Please, what’s the solution?

  17. Braudis † on 31 January 2012 #

    BTW, I’m really not a php person, which is why your plugin is so great. It makes a great deal easier. I appreciate the fact that it’s free, but this really is not a complaint, it’s an observation. If I need to use code to correct the problem, doesn’t that defeat the purpose of the ease and simplicity of the plugin?

  18. Braudis † on 31 January 2012 #

    I think I’ve got it working now.

  19. Penelope † on 31 January 2012 #

    Hi
    I’m trying to get the weather widget to only appear on the home page of my wordpress site http://moti.org/blog/

    I have installed the widget logic plugin so that I can choose the pages that widgets appear on. This works just fine for all the other widgets except for the weather widget.

    What happens is that when I fill in the widget logic box for the weather widget and press update the instruction just disappears. Consequently the meteo appears on every page with a sidebar which is not what I want. I think there must be a conflict or a bug somewhere.

    Can you help with a simple solution?
    Many thanks
    Penelope

  20. admin on 31 January 2012 #

    On the off chance that Braudis, looks back in, it would be great if you could sketch out what went wrong, in case anyone else sees something similar. It’s not something that the code update should have caused.

    Penelope, i’d have to look at the widget you are using. If it’s http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/weather-widget/ i’ll have a quick look soon

  21. Penelope † on 31 January 2012 #

    Hi – thanks for getting back to me
    The weather widget is GoGadget Weather and Weatherforecast Widget.
    I used this one because it comes in French and the weather underground forecast for Agen(our local town), France is always very accurate.

    I am using an artisteer generated design for the site.

    I installed the wigit logic widget and then the goGadgetweather widget and several others including text widgets to appear in the sidebar. Widget logic works for the others but not for the weather one.I fill in the options for the weather widget and then the logic box with
    is_page(‘home’)
    just like the others then when I press save it disappears – poouf!

    I tried everything reinstalling, re-activating ticking and unticking the widget logic boxes at the bottom etc but nothing worked, however I have found a temporary solution.

    Following the instructions in the GoGadget manual I activated a shortcode plugin for the weather widget and put it in a text widget. The widget logic code does work with text widgets so I was able to program it to only show on the home page. This is working for now, but it would be nice to have it working properly.

    If you send me an e-mail I will send you the login so you can have a look for yourself.
    Many thanks
    Penelope

  22. Board Directory † on 4 February 2012 #

    Hello,

    i find this to be the best plugin out there of its type. And find it very handy to use the short space we have for widgets.

    Regards

  23. Eileen † on 18 February 2012 #

    I am having a nightmare with mine. http://www.egypttodaytravel.com and could really do with advice. I have placed some graphic widgets on my sidebars and they are great when on the home page or on the other “pages” pages. But if they land on a category I get a big brown box that is actually going over my tour summary boxes (from the transfers and transport widget) and falling off the page on the right hand sidebar (for the other widgets). I dont know what I am doing wrong. If I put is_home_page() it disappears, i have tried is_front_page() and I have even tried taking it off the category pages by using !is_category(). Nothing works. I either lose it completely from the home page or if I dont put anything in the logic then it is fine on the home page but the problem comes back into the category pages i.e. 01 Day Tours for example you will see the brown box comes back up. Can anyone help?

  24. Alan not logged in † on 18 February 2012 #

    Eileen, your problem appears to be a CSS problem. your home page BODY tag has a simple class of “home blog” but the category pages BODY class is (e.g.) “archive category category-01-day-egypt-tours category-57 parent-category-tours-of-egypt” which is very different and the result is different CSS rules get applied.

  25. Eileen † on 18 February 2012 #

    Hi Alan, thanks for getting back to me. I have absolutely no web design experience at all, our web designer put all the main bits on the website but has failed to respond to me in over a week to try to resolve this problem. And now I’m trying to fix it myself :-) what do I do then to only have the widgets on the home page? or even if its possible on the home page and on the other pages rather than the category ones? most importantly it is the home page I really need them on. But ideally if I could have them on the other pages except for the actual tours or tour summaries. thanks for your help so far Alan xx

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