Beyond Widgets…
presented at
WordPress DC - August Lightning Talks
August 13, 2013
Follow Along
Hi, I'm Russell Heimlich
(Heimlich, like the maneuver)
Chief Widget Wrangler at the Pew Research Center
Widgets
- Modular content chunks that can be mixed and matched
- Drag and drop to re-order
- Easy to use, no coding required
Widgets are AWESOME!
Except when they get out of hand...
The PewResearch.org homepage is made up of 10 different sidebars.
We wanted managing the content on the homepage to be easy!
Now our editors want everything to be easy.
We needed a landing page for our LGBT series of reports.
- Content from across the Pew Research Center
- Frequently changing as new content is published
- Editorially-controlled ordering
Widgets to the rescue?
- This would require two additional sidebars
- Managing the widgets would mean navigating to different sections of the admin (confusing)
What if we wanted other landing pages?
We would end up with sidebars out the wazoo!
We Needed Something Better!
So we built it…
and we call it
WP Gizmos
WP Gizmos are like per-post/page/whatever widgets.
WP Gizmos
- Drag and drop reordering
- Different types can be mixed and matched
- Add as many as you want
- Stay on the same page you're editing
- Flexible!
Gizmo Metabox
Editing a Gizmo
Demo time!
Available on GitHub
Questions?
Tweet me, @kingkool68, or contact me.