RSS Blogroll vs Image Widget

Image Widget is a simple plugin that uses the native WordPress media manager to add image widgets to your site. Image Widget Features Responsive MU Compatible Handles image resizing and alignment Link the image Add title and description Versatile – all fields are optional Upload, link to external image, or select an image from your media collection Customize the look & feel with filter hooks or theme overrides Quality You Can Trust Image Widget is developed and maintained by The Events Calendar, the same folks behind The Events Calendar, Event Tickets, and a full suite of premium plugins. This plugin is actively supported by our team and contributions from community members. If you see a question in the forum you can help with or have a great idea and want to code it up or submit a patch, that would be awesome! Not only will we shower you with praise and thanks, it’s also a good way to get to know us and lead into options for paid work if you freelance. Pull Requests & Translations Check us out on GitHub to pull request changes. Translations can be submitted here on WordPress.org. Documentation The built in template can be overridden by files within your template. Default vs. Custom Templates The Image Widget comes with a default template for the widget output. If you would like to alter the widget display code, create a new folder called “image-widget” in your template directory and copy over the “views/widget.php” file. Edit the new file to your hearts content. Please do not edit the one in the plugin folder as that will cause conflicts when you update the plugin to the latest release. New in 3.2: You may now also use the “sp_template_image-widget_widget.php” filter to override the default template behavior for .php template files. Eg: if you wanted widget.php to reside in a folder called my-custom-templates/ and wanted it to be called my-custom-name.php: add_filter('sp_template_image-widget_widget.php', 'my_template_filter'); function my_template_filter($template) { return get_template_directory() . '/my-custom-templates/my-custom-name.php'; } Filters There are a number of filters in the code that will allow you to override data as you see fit. The best way to learn what filters are available is always by simply searching the code for ‘apply_filters’. But all the same, here are a few of the more essential filters: widget_title This is actually a pretty typical filter in widgets and is applied to the widget title. widget_text Another very typical widget filter that is applied to the description body text. This filter also takes 2 additional arguments for $args and $instance so that you can learn more about the specific widget instance in the process of filtering the content. image_widget_image_attachment_id Filters the attachment id of the image. Accepts additional $args and $instance arguments. image_widget_image_url Filters the url of the image displayed in the widget. Accepts additional $args and $instance arguments. THIS IS DEPRECATED AND WILL EVENTUALLY BE DELETED image_widget_image_width Filters the display width of the image. Accepts additional $args and $instance arguments. image_widget_image_height Filters the display height of the image. Accepts additional $args and $instance arguments. image_widget_image_maxwidth Filters the inline max-width style of the image. Hint: override this to use this in responsive designs 🙂 Accepts additional $args and $instance arguments. Return null to remove this css from the image output (defaults to ‘100%’). image_widget_image_maxheight Filters the inline max-height style of the image. Accepts additional $args and $instance arguments. Return null to remove this css from the image output (defaults to null) image_widget_image_size Filters the selected image ‘size’ corresponding to WordPress registered sizes. If this is set to ‘tribe_image_widget_custom’ then the width and height are used instead. Accepts additional $args and $instance arguments. image_widget_image_align Filters the display alignment of the image. Accepts additional $args and $instance arguments. image_widget_image_alt Filters the alt text of the image. Accepts additional $args and $instance arguments. image_widget_image_link Filters the url that the image links to. Accepts additional $args and $instance arguments. image_widget_image_link_target Filters the link target of the image link. Accepts additional $args and $instance arguments. image_widget_image_attributes Filters a list of image attributes used in the image output. Similar to ‘wp_get_attachment_image_attributes’ Accepts $instance arguments image_widget_link_attributes Filters a list of attributes used in the image link. Similar to ‘wp_get_attachment_image_attributes’ Accepts $instance arguments Have You Supported the Image Widget? If so, then THANK YOU! Also, feel free to add this line to your wp-config.php file to prevent the image widget from displaying a message after upgrades. define( ‘I_HAVE_SUPPORTED_THE_IMAGE_WIDGET’, true ); For more info on the philosophy here, check out our blog post

I don’t really like Blogrolls, I think they’re often not much more than glorified link dumps. I don’t like how they give you nothing more than the Blog title, and unless that title really grabs your attention, you’re never gonna click it. I don’t like how they are often just a static list, commonly out of date, that you learn to ignore after the first 4 page views. In their current format, they just appear to be a great waste of space. This is why I decided to create the RSS Blogroll plugin. RSS Blogroll allows you to link to your favourite blogs via the latest items from their RSS/Atom feed. Article titles are much more attention grabbing and will deliver much higher quality traffic. We all hate clicking through to abandoned blogs – displaying article publication dates also lets readers know these are up to date and active sites. Many of us want to direct some of our traffic to related sites. RSS Blogroll will create deeplinks to the target sites, which are much more useful for SEO than homepage links. Overall it’s a win-win situation with a better browsing experience for users and the linked sites getting more visitors who are actually interested in their content.