Be careful when updating !

Hmmm Justin, need help here.

Referring to the category widget, the old plugin used to have a dropdown list to include or exclude terms by ctrl-clicking their names from the list. Now it seems the only way to specify which terms I want is to enter a comma separated list of term ids (numbers!?) which is much less intuitive. If I enter names they get erased, leaving only the commas.

Is this on purpose or is mine broken?

I’ve used and loved this plugin for years now and this is the first time that an update has made me pause and go, “… Now what am I supposed to do?”

I’m not sure if this was meant to happen, either, but all my pre-filled data from my previous plugin interations were all wiped with the update, too, and left in their place blank plugins with bunches of functions… and no pre-filled/pre-populated data to choose from.

I’m not a very PHP-savvy person and I personally really appreciated the pre-populated data/choices offered in the older plugins when selecting functions and display options and such.

Yes, I know I can play the mix-and-match game with the Codex by matching functions to the functions in the Codex and adding in data accordingly, but even that is a bit of a longshot because I’m not always sure what kind of data I am supposed to enter and for which functions to make my widgets display the way they used to.

I read the readme as I always do and the readme doesn’t provide any walkthroughs or instructions (aside from pointing to which template functions the various widgets call and hence, matching functions to the Codex to figure out what data to input).

That said, after struggling to figure out which is which and what is what and until I am able to successfully populate the options correctly to display what I need to display, I am reverting back to the older version of the plugin.

I just wanted to address a few things.

Wiping widget settings

First, I’m sorry for wiping out widget settings. This actually was intentional, but I could’ve done a better job letting you all know about it beforehand. I forgot to add an upgrade notice and will take the blame for that. I’ll be adding the notice in the next update.

Widgets Reloaded, if you’re not aware, is just a copy of the widgets from my themes. This brings us to my next point on this subject.

Unfortunately, there’s really no way around the issue of losing widget settings from a code standpoint. Basically, I could’ve left the plugin the way it was or I could’ve updated it to the most recent version of the widgets from my theme. The plugin was several versions behind the themes. In those version changes, the way the widgets work went through some major changes. Essentially, I could’ve allowed the plugin to die off or bring you all the newest, best, and most secure code I could possibly give you. Yep, it’s a little bit of a trade-off, but this shouldn’t happen again in the future.

Category/tag/term drop-downs and lists

I actually preferred it the old way myself. However, it doesn’t work in many, many real-world scenarios where people have a lot of terms. It would bog down their widgets screen and even keep it from loading at all. Loading all those terms just wasn’t cutting it.

I’d love to expand on this feature in the future and make it more intuitive. However, the first order of business is getting the foundation correct. Development has to be an iterative process to get to those “cooler” features.

On not upgrading

That is always a valid choice. The older versions of the plugin are always available to anyone who wants to use them.

The big thing to keep in mind with using older versions is that it will be more likely to break with future WordPress upgrades than newer versions. It also means that you won’t get any security fixes if any security issues are found.

I don’t know of any changes on the horizon that will cause anything to break, but I don’t know what WordPress widgets will look like a year down the road either.

Thanks Justin, I understand the trade off.

There was a silver lining for me though… one thing I was planning on doing with the category widget was to add the Term Group value to some of my custom taxonomy terms so I could order them more exactly.

But instead I realized since I only wanted to include a few terms in a specific order, the “Navigation Menu” widget worked way better for that. I just created whatever grouping and order of terms I wanted in a custom menu with the fancy drag and drop that is built in to wp admin and use it and change it on a whim.

Who was it that said “necessity is the mother of invention”?

Thanks for keeping up with things!

Thank you so much for such a quick response, Justin. You really rock.

Also, your explanations make complete sense; thank you for taking the time to explain all of that.

I did do some more reading before you posted and did read about the plugin’s connection with Hybrid so I had a feeling that maybe in keeping up with the theme (and WP’s own updates) that the changes had to be done.

I can understand about the bogging down you explained; I just personally never used THAT many terms so selecting them was easy enough and without lagging. I never thought about how it would be for someone with a long list – ouch!

I guess my question now is this: Do you have any ideas on an easier way for someone who isn’t PHP-savvy to populate these various options?

If I could get a handle for doing this, then this lack of populated data isn’t as much of an issue anymore.

Thanks again! ??

As others have noted, I lost all my settings. But more seriously, though I can still drag from “Inactive Widgets,” I can’t drag anything from the “Available Widgets” area, leaving my site without a search function — which was lost with the upgrade.

Hi Justin,

where do you find the numbers of the categories, so I am able to exclude certain categories from the plugin??

I did ask the question in the my first post but have had no reply?

Cheers,

Was reading through my posts and questions and realized that there were some additional questions to this particular thread.

Since I -might- be able to provide a solution, I thought I would give it a shot and answer these questions even though they’re a bit old. If they’re of no use to the OPs who asked them, then maybe someone else might find it useful.

That said:

@velovet/re: Unable to Drag from Available Widgets: I have had the same problem where after a WP upgrade, I seem to lose my Widget functionalities in the Admin panel; my widgets either freeze in place or I can’t add or remove things properly. If you haven’t already, disable all of your plugins and then re-enable them one by one.

@morphman: re: Excluding Certain Categories: You can find the numbers by going into your Admin Panel, going into Posts, going into Categories, and then mousing over each Category. There you will see each category’s ID number.

Admin Panel -> Posts -> Categories -> Mouse over the Categories listed and look at the URL that pops up and look for the ID number

This is useful to know – not just for Widgets Reloaded, but for any other category-related customization (like, removing certain categories from appearing in your main blog).

Cheers!