Widgetize Pages Light: WordPress Plugin

Widgetize Pages Light plugin for WordPress

I installed Widgetize Pages Light plugin (by OTWthemes) because, with it, I can drop widgets anywhere into my posts or pages.  At the time of install, there were over 10,000+ active installs with generally 5 star user ratings.

With this widget, you can also build your own custom page layout so that you can place your widgets. (See reference below for the widget’s online documentation.) I find it much easier and more versatile to drop widgets into my pages without using the layout builder.  So I will talk about the how-to of that aspect here.

How to use Widgetize Pages Light plugin

Once you have installed and activated the plugin, you will see it as a menu item in your WordPress (WP) admin.

Widgetize Pages Light in Admin menu

The first thing you do is create a new sidebar.

Note: Don’t worry about the term “sidebar”.  The terminology is not very accurate as it is not really a sidebar as you know it in WordPress.

Step 1: Add Sidebar

Give you new sidebar a Title.  This will appear on your site (in the Widgets pages).

Then save.

Add in title & (opt) description for your WPL sidebar

Once you have created your Widgetize Pages Light (WPL) sidebar, you will see it in your list of WPL sidebars.

Note also the format for shortcode

The sidebars list will show you the sidebar ID.  Pay particular attention to the format of the shortcode.  You can manually use the shortcode and insert that directly into anywhere on your page(s). (Including the square brackets.) But there is a better way of doing this. Read on … 🙂

Remember, right now, we have created a sidebar but it has nothing in it. However the WPL sidebar you have created is now widgetized.  So we will be able to see it in our widget pages.

You will be able to see your created new WPL sidebar on the Widgets page.  And just like all your other widget-blocks on that page, you can drop available widgets (e.g. custom menu, selected posts or pages, text, etc.) into the WPL sidebar-block

WPL sidebar block in Widgets page

How to get your WPL sidebar into a post/page?

Once you have dropped an available widget into your WPL sidebar block, it will have content.

When you go to the editing mode of a page/post, you will see a WPL icon which makes it easy to add the “WPL Demo” anywhere into your page.

WPL icon for insertion

Once you click the icon, an “Insert sidebar” window will pop up. You can select the sidebar you want to have inserted.

select the WPL sidebar to be inserted

It will automatically insert the correct shortcode into your page.

WPL sidebar shortcode automatically inserted

When you preview your page, you will be able to see that widget properly displayed.

Example

Below is an example where I have created a WPL sidebar and used a Custom Menu widget in it.  Then inserted the WPL sidebar into a few pages.  That way, the menu is automatically there and I only need to modify the Custom menu (in Admin >> Appearance >> Menus) to change the content and not have to go to each of the affected pages when I need to make a change.

Example of where a WPL sidebar has been used

As long as I have not changed or removed the WPL sidebar when you read this article, you can see it live at: Google Analytics 101.

References:

• otwthemes.com: Online documentation: Widgetize Pages Light
• wordpress.org: Widgetize Pages Light plugin