Custom Field Widget

The Custom Field Widget displays values of custom field keys, allowing post- and page-specific meta sidebar content with limitless applications.

Custom Field Widget is for WordPress 2.6.x and features:

• Multiple widget instances possible
• Widget-specific optional title and text
• Conditional functionality, i.e., without a matching key, the widget is not displayed
• Practically unlimited possible uses

Use

If you are unfamiliar with custom fields, you should first read about them on the WordPress Codex.

Custom fields are added to posts and pages from the Write > Page and Write > Post menus, just below the main editor area. You may add as many custom fields to a post/page as you like.

There are two separate fields for each custom field: the key and its value. The Custom Field Widget finds a specified key and then displays its corresponding value in the sidebar. Without a matching key, nothing is displayed.

The Custom Field Widget doesn’t necessarily ‘do’ anything, but it enables an advanced (and often overlooked) feature built-in to WordPress. For example, see 28 Ways to Use WordPress Custom Fields for a small picture of possibilities.

I developed this plugin for my own use. I wanted to display a small table of contents for certain pages (which are without categories) in the sidebar dynamically. Without a widget, I would have to edit the sidebar file(s) for each theme I used.

Because each table of contents (a short ol of items) varied from page to page, it also had to be specific to each page. So I created a custom field key of toc and added the ol of items to its value. Enabling the plugin, I had a table of contents appear in the sidebar for each page with a custom field key of toc.

The uses and applications of WordPress custom fields are infinite. Just search for WordPress custom fields for thousands of results on this subject.

License

Custom Field Widget, a plugin for WordPress, (C) 2008 by Scott Allan Wallick, is licensed under the GNU General Public License.

Custom Field Widget is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

Custom Field Widget is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but without any warranty; without even the implied warranty of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with Custom Field Widget. If not, see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/.