New Plugin: WP-Dash for Testers/Developers

Do what? How do you add ?install to the URL – where? in which file? Yikes.

This is really slick but the errors are a bit painful. I visited the Dashboard page and it’s blank. I clicked on Select Widgets and “launched all three” and nothing happened but more errors. I hunted all around my admin panels and there are no widgets there. Hmmm.

Thanks.

I agree, Lorelle. A readme.txt file would have been nice. I tried appending the string ?install in the plugin page of my WP Dashboard and that seemed to quieten things down a bit.

And I think the order in which you activite the plugins is important. I got the things to appear on the Dashboard, but the main plugin, where you designate what “widgets” you want to appear doesn’t do anything but sit there.

And another disturbing (to me anyway) thing is that when this trio of plugins is installed, when you look up at your Dashboard main links, your logout link now says: (). Weird.

I think I’ll wait until it’s been a bit more developed.

This was posted as “WP-Dash for Testers/Developers,” so perhaps we can cut masquerade a bit of slack on the errors and lack of documentation. :)

The logout link being blank is some strange bug related to the way I hijack the index page without overwriting it (hook into admin_head, include the new index file, and die.

As far as widget’s just sitting there, that seems odd as I’ve never had that trouble. (Try dragging around on the dark blue title bar in case nobody noticed) Mind posting browser versions and the like? (If its opera, I’m not surprised, their XMLHTTPREQUEST sucks)

Okay, here are the instructions for installing this lovely plugin, which by the way uses Ajax for some fun stuff:

Upload the two “sets” of files to your WordPress site. In the one included in the wp-admin folder, copy that to your wp-admin folder. In the wp-content/plugins folder of the zip file, copy the entire wp-dash folder to your wp-content/plugins folder.

Activate WP-Dash in your Plugins Admin panel. You can also active the other two widgets, Quick Post and Recent Posts, or do those later.

Immediately, until it is fixed, the top of your Plugin panel screen will be filled with errors. That’s okay. For now, just live with them.

Click on the menu link for Dashboard. Your Dashboard should now be empty and there is a new tag that says “Widget Selector”. In your browser’s address bar, at the end of the address, add ?install to the end of the address such as:

.../wp-admin/index.php?install

Click enter and everything will be fixed and the errors will be gone.

Click on “Select Widget” and you will find three options. Click “launch” to make that widget “window” appear in your Dashboard.

Now, WARNING!!!! This is still under testing and development, but it is a prime example of the possibilities that are possible. It’s a fun toy and expect great things from it in the future as it grows.

Thanks, masquerade!

Hi, Masq. I can post a screen shot of what it’s doing.

Also, do you think there might be something to my query about the ORDER in which you install the three plugins? Because on the plugins page, they are listed in this order:

1. Quick Post Widget
2. Recent Posts for WP Dash
3. WP Dash

Originally, when it started throwing out the errors, I had gone down the list, starting with Quick Post. Also, putting ?install in the url when I clicked on it did help with it throwing out errors.

I see now what you mean about a call for more widgets. Right now there are just the two, Quick Post and Recent Posts. For some reason, I got it in my head this was just a restyling of the current WP Dashboard, with the WP Blog pulled into it. But it is not.

Anyway, here’s a link to a .JPG of the weirdness with the Login link (which for my particular install of WP usually says (Admin).

https://www.babygotblog.com/images/wpdashanomaly.jpg

Joni

One thing it really needs, masquerade, is either a create table fixit for MySQL or instructions to go create one first…. that’s what most of the errors at the top of the plugin admin page are….

And so far, the only other li’l things I see offhand, are 1: that even though I have both widgets already launched and resident on the dashboard screen, the widget selector page shows that quick post is still available for launch, and allows one to launch it multiple times; and 2: dragging the credits etc. window or the widget selector window on the admin screen duplicates them instead of moving them.

But this is REALLY NIFTY! And I am SO looking forward to more goodies to play with. This could make the dashboard a real interface to one’s blogs after all! Thanks for allowing us to play!

I just fixed every problem anyone has mentioned here, and uploaded a new version. Go grab the new version here and tell me if you find anything majorly wrong with this release.

vkaryl, the Quick Post can intentionally be launched twice, and I should’ve made a note on this. Its to demonstrate the functionality that Widget Authors can set their widgets to be able to have multiple instances (will become truely useful when the config stuff gets done so a widget author could have it set so each instance of the widget is different).

And I just bloodied myself running the new version and it works like a charm.

This has a very cool future. Ignore my earlier instructions and thanks to everyone helping masquerade test this thing. Very slick plugin.

For relle (Lorelle) I spent two minutes and whipped up a bbstats widget for the dashboard, which can now also be found here

Thanks for letting me know on that – glad it’s a feature and not a bug!

Grabbing the new stuff now….

Nice plugin ??

The dashboard, as it comes with WordPress, is definitely not very helpful, so this looks like a good project….

Quickpost – I really need to be able to choose a category for the post, otherwise it is listed under Uncategorised, which doesn’t help much…

That’s all planned for the future, and its in a feature that isn’t yet exposed for lack of finished development and testing, but widget authors will be able to setup configuration stuff for their widgets.

Am almost done with BBStats new version. This includes a widget for WP-Dash

Hi.
But there is plugin which works that way: x-Dashboard
Look at: https://wp-plugins.net/index.php?id=225