One of the easiest ways to control which WordPress Widgets display on a particular place, there is a great WordPress Plugin called Widget Logic. There used to be a more non-technical tool called Widget Logic Visual,  but of WordPress v3.5 the visual version no longer works.

Step 1: Go to Appearance > Widgets

Step 2: Add your new widget or open the widget you’d like to add logic to. Once the widget is opened look to the section at the bottom of the widget just above the SAVE button.

Step 3: Adding Logic

Inside that widget logic space we can put some commands to set where this widget displays. The above example is using is_page() command… this is telling this widget to only display on pages, not single posts, categories etc, just pages.

Examples

Here is a short list of the commands that can be added to the widget logic box.

• is_home() — just the main blog page
• !is_page('about') — everywhere EXCEPT this specific WP ‘page’
• !is_user_logged_in() — shown when a user is not logged in
• is_category(array(5,9,10,11)) — category page of one of the given category IDs
• is_page(array(7,12,18,24)) –  page of one of the given page IDs

In the last 2 bullets you’ll notice a bunch of numbers separated by commas. Those are  ID #’s. If you only wanted a widget to display on a set of particular pages or categories you use the appropriate command and list the ID’s of the pages.  Now you are probably asking yourself how to find the ID, check out the following  tutorial which explains just how to  Find a Page or Post ID in WordPress.

For a more command examples visit the Widget Logic page.

Finding the Page or Post ID for your WordPress content is pretty simple and can be done in one of 2 ways.

1. Via the Page / Post Editor

To find the WP Page or Post ID via the Dashboard, simply click to a saved or published WP Page or Post and look up in the Address or URL bar at the top of your browser.  You are looking for something that looks like …post.php?post=113&….

Where it says post=113 is your ID #, so this particular post in the screenshot is id# 113.

2. From the Front End of the Website While Logged In

Login to your WordPress dashboard, then go to your website hompage and navigate to the page you’d like to obtain the Post ID for. Role your mouse over the Edit Button in the WordPress Toolbar at the top of the webpage. While your mouse is hovering, look in the lower left corner (most browsers) of the page and you will see a URL pop-up. Just as in the above example you are looking for the part that says post= then the # that is assigned to the given page. In the below example the Page ID is 32.

There you have it… two easy ways to find a WordPress Post or Page ID.

From time to time one might run into an issue with their WordPress blog or CMS where stuff just stops working. Your visual editor disappears, the widget panel becomes inoperable or something just freaks out… you are most likely experiencing a plugin conflict.

A plugin conflict is when the code or processing from one plugin interferes with the processing of another plugin. The ultimate end is a stalemate and things start to lock up… like your widget panel or visual editor.

Detecting Which WP Plugin In Conflicted

To detect where the plugin conflict lies you have to go through a simple process of elimination. We start by deactivating all WP Plugins.

Step 1: Go to the Plugins page in your WP Dashboard, toggle Active Plugins and check the box in the darker gray bar above the list of plugins to select all. Choose Deactivate from the drop menu and click Apply to deactivate all the plugins at once.

Step 2: Reactivate each plugin one at time, testing the website as you reactivate. I tend to reactivate the most important plugins first, things like Cart66, Gravity Forms or any other plugin that is integral to your site.

Continue reactivating each plugin until you find the one that breaks your site. If you go through this process and you can’t get things working right please submit a support ticket.

With the release of WordPress 3.5, they added a new photo gallery function built into the Media Gallery Uploader. Here is a quick step-by-step tutorial to creating a photo gallery in WordPress.

Five Steps to Creating a WordPress Photo Gallery

Step 1: To add a gallery go to the page or post you want your gallery to display on or simply add a new post. Once on the page or post editor screen, click Add Media and a window will pop open.

Step 2: Once on the Insert Media screen choose Create Gallery in upper left column of the screen and then click select files from the middle of the screen. Repeat the upload process 1 image at a time.

Step 3:  Once all the images are uploaded, click to the Media Library screen where you now select the images you would like included in the gallery and drag them into the order you’d like.  Finish this step by clicking the Create Gallery button in the lower right corner of the media screen.

Step 4:  Adjust the gallery settings in the right column. You can choose to link each image to itself to display the full size image or link to the media file page it gets attached to upon upload. You can also set the # of columns to display your images and set random order if you are feeling spunky.

Step 5: After clicking the Insert Gallery button in step 4,  your page or post editor should look something like the screenshot below in visual view.

Finally, the finished gallery should look something like this…

Something I noticed…

In the finished gallery when viewing from the webpage, If you click to an individual image you have to click the back button on the browser to get back to the gallery to click on the next image.  I’m a little surprised they did not add LightBox functionality to the gallery. If you’d like a more robust gallery I would suggest the NextGEN Gallery Plugin.

I launched the Click Refresh website about a year and half ago and finally decided that the look and feel needed a little tweaking.  I added some navigational icons, updated the logo a bit, and modified the header section of the website. Hope you like it!

I also decided it was time to add the blog function into the website.  The blog will post announcements about upgrades, new tools available, tutorials and more.  Be sure to subscribe to our RSS Feed to keep up to date. .

Here is a before and after of the website for a side by side comparison. I used the new WordPress Photo Gallery function built into WordPress 3.5.