In honor of Cyber Week I thought that a bit of technical blog post would be more appropriate.  For those that are unaware Cyber Week is November 27-December 3, 2011.  If you’re a technology geek and love having new toys then go out there and take advantage of the savings.  For the rest of you that are plugged into this blog post here’s a piece of technical information that may assist you with your WordPress blog.

So, you have a WordPress website and thrilled about it.  That’s great!  You’ve taken the first step towards building a web presence with the use of a content management system that will put some cash in your pockets.  Although if you’re like many other WordPress users out there chances are there’s a struggle between you and your blog website.  It’s not uncommon that many bloggers are capable marketers and/or copywriters but don’t have the slightest clue about web development.  Well, maybe I should rephrase that for the sake of this blog post.  Building a proper blog website presence entails in versed knowledge of the platform and its capabilities.  Think of it this way – you wouldn’t buy a car first unless you test-drive it, right?  Same concept to an extent.

Versatility In WordPress Sidebars & Widgets

WordPress offers a tremendous amount of potential for bloggers.  Its primary purpose since inception was geared towards providing the best Open Source Solution (OSS) on the web for an efficient blogging experience.  Needless to say 10% of websites currently on the internet are supported by this amazing platform.  One of its key features consists of the ability to utilize widgets in its sidebar section.  An extremely useful option for displaying things like your social media activity via Twitter/Facebook/LinkedIn, latest blog posts, latest comments and much more.  Let’s say you want to switch things up a bit between various pages and/or blog posts.  For example, you’d like to show a certain widget on the front page of your blog but hide it on a single post page.  As they would say in the Apple world, “There’s an app for that.” – well, “There’s a plugin for that too.”

Using ‘Display Widget’ Plugin for WordPress

As I mentioned above you can use various widgets on multiple pages or posts within your site.  Typically from a web development standpoint this would entail the creation of new template files in order to accommodate the need.  Fortunately the Display Widget plugin for WordPress can do just that without having to work with any messy code.

How do you install the ‘Display Widget’ for WordPress?  There are a couple of ways you can do this easily.

Method 1

1. Log in to the administration section of your WordPress site.
2. Scroll down to ‘Plugins’ on the left sidebar and click on ‘Add New’.
3. In the search box type ‘Display Widgets’ to locate the plugin from the repository.
4. Choose ‘Install Now’ to complete the installation.

Method 2

1. Download the ‘Display Widgets’ plugin for WordPress directly from the developer’s website.
2. Then, log in to the administration panel section of your WordPress website by going to http://www.yourdomain.com/wp-admin
3. Once logged in, scroll down to the ‘Plugins’ section and select ‘Add New’ option.
4. On the next screen select ‘Upload’ option.  Locate the file you downloaded from your desktop and upload it accordingly.  ‘Activate Plugin’ once completed.

Now that we have the technical part done you can breathe a little easier.  The settings of the plugin itself can be found below each individual widget during administration.  See the screenshot below for details.

As you will noticed in the image above the configuration settings for the Display Widgets plugin can be found under each individual widget.  You’ll need to access your existing sidebar and widgets respectively from the administration panel and make your desired changes.  There are quite a few changes that you can make here.  Let your mind flow with creativity and exercise it accordingly on pages or single blog posts.

There’s no messy code to deal with.  Just a widget that can provide you with ready-made selections.  If all else fails and you’re unsuccessful in your attempt to install this widget, feel free to contact me for further support.