Question about Plugin

Hi there,

Thanks so much for your questions and feedback. Initially, the plugin omitted widget-alias widgets from the drop-down select, for the very reasons you mentioned. In a later version I added them back in, primarily because I couldn’t see a reason why not to. Yes, it does add a bit more clutter. That’s the main downside. One upside I can think of is that if you’re using Widget Alias’ ability to override a widget title – then it might make sense to duplicate a WA widget, instead of the original (and have to rewrite the title again).

I am open to both options though. Do you feel strongly one way or another moving forward? I would love more input on optimizing this plugin (and all of our plugins).

Thanks!

Interesting.

So is this how it works, just so I am clear.

text-widget-1 with title A
alias-widget-1 (alias of text-widget-1) with title A (I just leave title blank)

Then whenever text-widget-1 is updated, so will alias-widget-1 (content and title)

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Then if I want to use a different title, but same content

text-widget-1 with title A
alias-widget-1 (alias of text-widget-1) with title B

Then whenever text-widget-1 is updated, the content but not title in alias-widget-1 will be updated.

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Now let’s say I plan on using the same content with two different widget titles across the site on several pages for each.

text-widget-1 with title A
alias-widget-1 (alias of text-widget-1) with title B

For title A, I would just make an alias of text-widget-1
For title B, I would just make an alias of alias-widget-1

If I update the content in text-widget-1, it will get updated for all widgets that are aliases and aliases of aliases

If I update title A – it will get updated for aliases of the original text-widget-1

If I updated title B – it will get updated for aliases of the alias-widget-1 (with is an alias of the original text-widget-1)

Is all of that correct?

So being able to make an alias of an alias saves time if you ever plan on using the same widget across many sidebars and want to update or change the title across several pages.

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This seems like a really strange scenario. I think it would almost be more clear to just create two separate original text widgets with different titles (same content). So you would have to update the text in two places instead of one, which is not that bad. It gets bad when you have to do it 20 times…

Does the ability to create aliases of aliases slow down the backend? This seems like it would since there is another association.

Is it possible to add a control page or a selector somewhere that gives you the option to make aliases of aliases? If not selected, they are not available in the drop-down? This might be the best of both worlds in terms of UI and functionality.

Thanks for the quick response.

Point taken, I think I will remove the aliased widgets from the drop-down list in the next version. Thanks for the extensive feedback!