widgets – Behind the Scenes

My Latest WordPress Multisite Community

Allow me to brag for just a moment…

More than four years since we sold our graphics business, I am happy to announce that I finally updated our company website. And in doing so, I have launched my latest WordPress multisite community. I’ll provide details about any hacks I make, and review multisite plugins I deploy in the future. For now I thought I would just share the content focus, for anyone not interested in the technical side of things.

Since we hit the road after Jerry lost his leg, there really hasn’t been any reason exciting enough to update our Agreda Communications site. I basically put up some links to Tripawds and our LiveWorkDream blog and left it alone. After traveling the country for three years in search of the next big thing, however, we found it.

The new and improved Team Agreda portal provides information about the new home-based wellness business we have launched, and how we help others do the same with:

No startup costs & no inventory to stock
No selling or sales quotas whatsoever
No shipping products or billing customers
Free lead generation websites
And absolutely no risk!

Interested? Contact us for complete details!

At first glance agreda.com doesn’t look like any sort of multi-user blogs community. That’s because I’ve made it private. We will be creating free lead generation sites for business partners and making certain value added content visible only to them using the Membership plugin from WPMU Dev. This will allow us to hide specific pages and other content we only want team members to see from the general public. Anyone who visits the site will still be able to read our biography, review the FAQs and contact us.

I would like to give one shout out to Josh Parker for his WPMS Sidebar Login Widget. After spending hours trying to hard-code a login/profile panel into the sidebar like we have on Tripawds, this plugin did the trick in minutes.

Now our partners can log into their dashboards from the main site to reveal members-only content. Thanks Josh!

How Tripawds Got Their Feed Back

Tripawds bloggers may have wondered where their dashboard notice announcing the most recent Tripawds News blog post went a few weeks ago. If not, they’re certain to notice the new announcement listing the five most recent posts from all the Tripawds Featured Blogs.

With the WordPress 3.1.2 update, the “Dashboard Feed” option mysteriously disappeared, leaving site administrators no way to show recent posts in the dashboard of all blogs across the network. It left me wondering what the heck happened! I posted in the WordPress forums about our Missing Recent Posts Feed in User Dashboard, asking if anyone else noticed or had an answer as to why it was gone. Silence.

About a week later, one member finally confirmed the issue and came up with a fix. The solution, however, required hacking the functions.php file which would not work for this community since Tripawds members can choose from more than 130 blog themes. Thanks to our Supporter plugin from WPMU Dev, Tripawds Supporters have access to even more premium themes.

How to Show Recent Posts from RSS Feed in User Dashboard

Piet from WordPress Tips quickly developed this plugin to show the latest posts from the main site of a multisite install in the user dashboard of all sub-sites across the network. By default the widget displays the three most recent posts from the main site. While no configuration is required for those happy with these settings, the plugin can easily be modified.

Multisite Dashboard Feed Widget Configuration Options:

Edit msrss.php to add the feed of your choice. (Default: blog_id=1)
Edit msrss.php to change the number of posts displayed (Default: 3).
Edit msdbfeed.php to change the widget’s title. (Default: Recent Updates)
See installation instructions for complete details.

We took things a step further by adding the extra information and links shown below the recent posts, as shown in our screenshot above. We also created a created a custom feed for multiple blogs to use in the widget.

How to Create a Recent Featured Posts Feed

Tripawds uses the Recent Global Posts Feed plugin from WPMU Dev to generate our feed for recent posts from all member blogs. This convenient plugin includes a Recent Global Posts Feed Widget for showing our global posts feed as a sidebar widget.

Tripawds Recent Featured Posts

When we wanted to only show posts from certain blogs in Piet’s Dashboard Feed Widget, however, I turned to the WPMU Dev Forums for support. As usual, masonjames had a quick answer for creating our Featured Blogs feed. Following his suggestions, here’s how I did it:

Download the Recent Global Posts Feed plugin.
Save a copy and rename the file “recent-featured-posts-feed.php”
Edit line 3 to change the plugin name (Plugin Name: Recent Featured Posts Feed)

Next, I added the specific blogs we wanted to include in the feed by editing line 58 as follows:

$query = $wpdb->prepare( "SELECT * FROM " . $wpdb->base_prefix . "site_posts WHERE blog_id IN (1, 167, 500, 138, 113, 262, 3) AND site_id = %d AND blog_public = '1' AND post_type = %s ORDER BY post_published_gmt DESC LIMIT %d", $current_site->id, $posttype, $number);

This is the key part where you will need to replace the blog IDs for sites you want included in the feed:

WHERE blog_id IN (1, 167, 500, 138, 113, 262, 3) AND

Upload the file to wp-content/ and check your new feed. It’s that simple. All thanks to our WPMU Dev Premium subscription!

Add ChipIn Widget To Tripawds Blogs

Let’s talk about widgets. Specifically, the 2010 Tripawds Campaign widget popping up all over the Tripawds community recently.

Tripawds is a user supported community, but we hate having to ask the community for support to keep this site up and running. So, the sooner we can reach our campaign goal, the sooner we can remove this annoying widget:

And here’s how you can help. In fact, here’s how you can add any widget to your Tripawds Blog sidebar. But let’s take a step back …

We are always happy to see new members join and create their own Tripawds Blog. But we are always surprised to see some of those same new blogs still have their default sidebars months later. We recommend all new bloggers view their blog and follow the helpful links provided in the default sidebars for doing things like changing the custom header, uploading user and blog avatars, and yes… updating the sidebars and widgets!

All blog themes available to Tripawds Bloggers include at least one sidebar. Widgets are sections that can be added to these sidebars from the Appearance menu of your blog dashboard. Standard widgets include a calendar for archived posts; lists for post categories, blog pages, or favorite links (your blogroll); recent posts and comments; meta information; or any arbitrary text.

NOTE: Keep the Meta widget in your sidebar for easy access to your blog dashboard. If you remove it, you can always visit your dashboard at yourblog.tripawds.com/wp-admin

Simply drag the widget you want to the preferred location in your desired sidebar, and “drop” it. Configure any available settings, click save and visit your blog to see the changes.

The text widget is the one we’ll be using in our example here. Follow the instructions below to help show your support for the 2010 Tripawds Community Campaign by adding the ChipIn widget to your sidebar.

How To Add Chip In Widget to Blog Sidebar

Copy the ChipIn embed code by clicking the “copy” link in the widget above.
Visit your blog Dashboard -> Appearance -> Widgets tab.
Expand the sidebar where you want to add the widget (If it is not already visible).
Drag the Text widget to the desired location of your sidebar. (A dotted line will represent where it will appear.)
Release the widget and an expanded field will appear.
Add a title to your new widget. (i.e.; Help Support Tripawds!)
Paste the entire ChipIn code you copied into the content area of the new widget.
Click Save, and view your blog to see the changes.

You should notice the new sidebar widget in your blog, just like in the right sidebar of this blog. (NOTE: If widget is missing here, the campaign must be over!) Don’t forget to remove the widget when we reach our campaign goal so we can stop begging for help. Thank you for yor continued support.

Any questions? Ask with a comment below or in the Tripawds Tech Support forum so we can share the answer with the community. If you’re wondering what the heck ChpIn is, click the “about” link in the widget or check out the Tripawds ChipIn Page for complete details.