Today let’s learn a simple quick trick on how to create a custom widget. For my example I will show you how I created my Showcase widget located in the middle, to the right of the posts.

First under your functions.php file type in the following:

<?php // Custom Widget
function MyCustomWidget() { ?>
<li class="widget">
    <h2 class="heading">Latest Showcase</h2>
        <ul>
        	<?php include(TEMPLATEPATH . '/includes/showcase.php'); ?>
        </ul>
</li>

<?php }

register_sidebar_widget('The Custom Widget for Showcase', 'MyCustomWidget'); ?>

• Always make sure your code is between the <?php and ?> for it to work.
• Once we call the function, the rest is assuming html code that you may or may not need.

• For instance, you may just put in a picture and call it a day. But my code starts with <li< because my sidebar’s start and end with <ul<.
• Any way, once your done, just set the final “register_sidebar_widget('the widget title', 'the name of the function');“

That’s it! Now you have a custom widget with what ever you want!

Here is a nifty trick for your comments.php template. If someone comes to your site and leaves a comment but doesn’t leave a url back to there site, the default link that is shown in place of the php code comment_author_url is the current page link.

That might not look good. So, here is a little trick that I just implemented into my site. Besides installing the twittar plugin and pulling Twitter avatars I wanted to use the image itself for the authors url like. But if the author doesn’t have a Twitter avatar or a Gravatar it will display a default Gravatar that I set. If the default Gravatar is shown, usually the author will not leave a url link.

I would like to link the image to Gravatar.com so that they can get an image attached to their email address. So.. here is the code:

<?php if($comment->comment_author_url != "") { ?>
<a href="<?php comment_author_url(); ?>"><?php gravatar(); ?></a>
<?php } else { ?>
<a rel="nofollow" href="http://gravatar.com" title="Get a Gravatar today!"><?php gravatar(); ?></a>
<?php } ?>

Here is a neat trick. Say you want to show a custom field in you post or in a certain categories post. There is a simple code you need to write in order to accomplish this:

<?php $image = get_post_meta($post->ID, "image", $single = true); ?>
<?php if($image != '') : if(in_category(7)) { echo ''; } else { ?>
<img src="<?php echo $image ?>" alt="<?php the_title(); ?>" /></a>

In the example above I am calling the variable $image and telling the server that it equals the value of “image” inside get_post_meta or “custom field” of the current post.

Then we are asking if that variable $image doesn’t equal nothing or != and if it is in the category id of 7, echo what ever is in the single quotes (which is nothing in this example), otherwise show the <img> and the value inside “image” which should be the location of the image.

Update: Thanks to Austin from PressedWords for pointing out his trick, from the comment below.