wordpress widget

I’m writing this post thanks to the contribution in the support forum of a guest, Robone.

It’s something that many people have asked for, and until now I always had to tell them no. The slideshow is a widget, there is no plugin version, so it can’t be used in posts.

But now, thanks to Robone, this is going to change!

The process of using a widget in a post is a bit elaborate, but not complicated. And it really works great.

How does it work?

First, you have to install the widget, create an instance of it in the Widgets admin panel, set it up correctly and get it working.

Then, go to the html code of your website in your browser (right click on the browser window and choose the appropriate voice in the popup menu). Find the slideshow code and copy it. You have to copy everything from <object> to </object>.

Create a new post, write your story, go to the editor’s HTML view, and paste the code in. This is the code from the slideshow on this site.

<object classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000"
            codebase="http://fpdownload.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=9,0,0,0"
            width="279" height="184">
      <param name="wmode" value="opaque" />
      <param name="movie" value="http://www.creativeclans.nl/wp-content/plugins/creative-clans-slide-show/CCSlideShow.swf" />
      <param name="FlashVars" value="config=http://www.creativeclans.nl/wp-content/plugins/creative-clans-slide-show/xmlconfig334758931.xml&amp;slides=http://www.creativeclans.nl/wp-content/plugins/creative-clans-slide-show/xmlslides334758931.xml" />
      <embed src="http://www.creativeclans.nl/wp-content/plugins/creative-clans-slide-show/CCSlideShow.swf"
             type="application/x-shockwave-flash"
             pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer"
             wmode="opaque"
             width="279" height="184"
      			 FlashVars="config=http://www.creativeclans.nl/wp-content/plugins/creative-clans-slide-show/xmlconfig334758931.xml&amp;slides=http://www.creativeclans.nl/wp-content/plugins/creative-clans-slide-show/xmlslides334758931.xml" />
    </object>

And this is the result of pasting it in the post:

Attention: if the slideshow doesn’t appear on the frontpage, but only when you go to the single post page (for example, clicking on the post title, or on ‘Leave a response’), it means that WP strips the object html tags from the excerpts. I resolved this problem installing the advanced excerpt plugin, and activating ‘No Custom Excerpts’ and ‘Don’t remove any markup’ in the plugin’s admin panel.

Once you’ve saved the post and checked if the slideshow shows, you can return to the Widgets admin panel, and move the widget into the ‘inactive widgets’ box. Doing so, it won’t show up in the widgets area of your template anymore, but it will continue to show in the post.

You can still make changes to the settings of the widget, and they will show in the post.

Attention: if you change height/width of the slideshow after you copied the code, you’ll have to adjust those values by hand in the post’s html code.

Good luck with this exiting new possibility. Any questions/problems are to be posted in the support forum. If you’ve got any suggestions or just want to tell me something, leave a reply.