I have created a little WordPress plugin in the shape of a widget, which allows the user to display an excerpt of a page in a sidebar area of their choice. It in fact now is online in the WordPress Plugin repository: Page Excerpt Widget. Feel free to test and rate it!
I wrote this to replace a little theme hack I did for a client, where the front page was supposed to have an excerpt of a page on the front page, of course linking to the full page. Instead of keeping it that way and hard coding the page-id, I wanted something where the end user could change which page was supposed to be linked.
Right now you can:
- Define the amount of characters to use as an excerpt
- Select the page from all existing pages
- Link the title of the page, to the page
- Append a link to the page
- Decide a custom label for the read more link
- the possibility for multiple instances of the widget
future plans:
- some internationalisation
Link to the github repository of the plugin, since I prefer git over svn: https://github.com/JonathanMH/page-excerpt-widget
Hi,
Just tested this. Its a nice and straightforward widget, much more effective than other, more sophisticated plugins…
Is this widget going to work with multi-language plugins such as WPML? If not, any ideas about plans to add this functionality? Your widget is amazingly simple, nice work.
Yes, multiple instances and multi language support are on the list for the future. I’ll take a look at how to support wpml
I like this concept very much!
[...] Drupal is an amazing CMS, but it was getting in the way of how I like doing things and what I wanted to work with in the near future, since I’ve also started developing WordPress Plugins. [...]
This is quite fab; thanks so much! Any idea of how easy it would be to add the page’s featured image to the widget’s output?
Actually, I just sorted out how to add this to the existing plugin’s code & admin. If this is something you’d like me to share, let me know
Apologies for the double posts and thanks for getting me set on the right path.
Hey, I’d love to see that! So happy I could make your life easier with this. Just send me a pull request on github or links to pastebin, I’ll see if I make it permanent features!
[...] instances of widgets are very easy since WordPress 2.8 and my little Page Excerpt Widget now is re-written to support just [...]
I have been using this plugin and it works perfectly, but I wanted just a bit more access to style the “read more” link. To get the extra styling I was looking for I had to go into the “jmh_pew.php” file and find the “a” tag that controlled the ['display_read_more'] instance. I know that it works for my purposes for now but if you come out with any new updates this will brake my update, so I am asking for an additional input from the admin panel below the “read more” label that can input a custom class.
I think that this will allow for just a bit more of a custom look and it will also allow for multiple styling with the same widget.
thanks you for the widget and for reading my comment.
Good point, I’ll get to that!
Hey, it’s fixed now in version 0.3 I just pushed today. Both the read more and also the title have a custom class!
Hello, just found your plugin and it’s great! Only thing is, i need to use it on 3 widgetized areas in my sidebar, but i can only use it once – the second one i use it in breaks and does not display / messes the page layout up.
Any ideas how i can use it 3 times in one sidebar?
Many thanks
Lucy
This should not happen, I’ll have a look at it right away.
I’m currently using this widget on a project. I discovered a bug with the markup. If you happen to cut a formatted portion of the text (i.e. an tag) it will only print the first portion of that tag. As a result, the system either wants to complete the tag or recognizes it as a wrapping element around everything else below that closed tag. If you could include an option to strip html formatting from the page that would be great.