How do I display 2 columns?

You can change the number of columns by adding the columns attribute. See Usage here.

This is helpful, but I notice (as some other users have as well) that the relative width of the columns doesn’t respond to the number of columns (i.e. 50% instead of 33%). Is there a way to set the width of the visible columns?

Has this problem been solved: The relative width of the columns does not respond to the number of columns? The “newest” post is 3 months old… …and no answer yet?!

I had to look up how I did this because it was so long ago. Because it was in the sidebar I couldn’t use the columns attribute so I believe I found a CSS answer somewhere else and just did it in CSS like this:

.widget widget_archive li {
    width:50%;
}

And to answer the other question, I put a div around the entire sidebar and specified the width as width:225px in the CSS to maintain the 50%. Here’s my sidebar.php:

<?php if ( is_active_sidebar( 'sidebar-1' ) ) : ?>
   <div class="rightcolumn">
     <?php dynamic_sidebar( 'sidebar-1' ); ?>
   </div><!-- #rightcolumn -->
<?php endif; ?>

If that works for you we should consider this resolved.

That is more of a hack than a resolution. My belief is that the plugin itself should accommodate multiple columns and relative widths. I don’t consider this resolved.

I agree but the problem is you can’t put shortcode into a widget (that I know of) so I had no other way to do it.

What this plugin needs is a Settings panel that will set options for a Widget.