WordPress Plugin Sidebar Feature

#1

As of version 2.0 of Listly WordPress Plugin (http://wordpress.org/plugin/listly), you can add various types of sidebar with list content to your site.

Depending on your theme’s capabilities and features, you can add Listly to main sidebar as well as any front page sidebars. The Listly sidebar has four modes and can be individually changed in each sidebar install.

  1. Specific List: Show a specific list in sidebar
  2. Random List: Show a random list from your Listly list posts
  3. Latest List: Show the latest Listly list
  4. List of Lists: Show a list of your posts in sidebar.

In modes 1, 2, and 3, you get to customize and display the list on the sidebar. In mode 4, you display a widget which is a index to your list posts.

Here’s how you add and customize your Listly Sidebar Widget:

  1. Go to Appearance -> Widgets in your WordPress dashboard

  1. Choose Listly from available widgets. You can do this multiple times for main sidebar widget and any Front Page widget areas that your theme might support.

  1. Select from “Specific List”, “Random List”, “Latest List”, or “List of Lists” from the dropdown

  1. Customize the chosen modes in the customize section

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  1. Save and preview the sidebar! Here’s how the List of Lists sidebar looks. Engage your users by pulling them into your top list posts!

#2

Hey, some great ideas here! Thanks for adding this.

I do have an issue or two in testing this. First, I have quite a few lists that I possibly want to appear randomly - so I tried that.

But even in minimal layout, with the Header showing, there’s too much data appearing. I don’t really want the reader to see the whole dang thing, I would like them to get a taste of the list and maybe click thru to see more.

Items:

  1. the header shows not only the title, but item counts etc… just let me show the title of the list - and not the heart and embed code either please. Just the dang title. This is a sidebar after all :slight_smile:
  2. the header list name should be clickable and take the reader to the whole list (and if I get really fancy, I would like to take them to a page on MY site where I have the list embedded)
  3. I’d like to be able to show only nnn characters (my selection) - some list items are massive and their text takes up the whole sidebar

Gear | planet5D DSLR video news and more! 2015-09-05 11-19-54.jpg473×1244 307 KB

#3

By the way, please give PRO users the ability to turn off the “powered by listly” entry. This hogs a good bit of space in my layout. Or just turn it off for pro users :slight_smile:

#4

Great feedback and suggestions. We will incorporate these suggestions in the next release…hopefully within the next couple of weeks.

1 Like
#5

I’ve been working on some things with my layout on the site. Disabled all plugins and then have been re-enabling them one by one and doing some performance testing.

When I turned listly back on, the lists work when embedded - the settings in the listly WordPress plugin show I’m connected to my listly account and that I’ve paid for pro.

But the sidebar widgets only show:

“No Listly list found. Get cracking and make some now!”

Did something change to make them not work in the sidebar any more? Something I haven’t turned back on that I need to?

you can see the lists are working when embedded: http://blog.planet5d.com/gear/hugh-brownstones-gear-recommendations/hugh-cameras/

#6

Can you please share screenshot of your Widget.

#7

Note… I deleted and re-added the widget thinking that might fix something. Same settings it had before I deleted and re-added.

Setup:

Result:

#8

Can you try increasing “posts to check” to 50 and see if that works.

#9

Mitch, a quick note…we are also trying to recreate the issue locally as well by following the same steps.

#10

i just switched to 50 and that kicked things into gear. I switched down to 20 items and that’s still ok. I added the “random” list widget back in too - with 20 posts as well.

switching back to 10 has turned them both back off. Prior to this, I had them set at the default of 10 so something is different than it was when I first tested.

Switching back to 20 and letting it run

#11

Note… some times the “random” widget returns this instead of a list…

#12

Please note that these Widget data are cached for 24 hours so you will only see the effect of change in items when the data expires. If you want to test it live then simply delete the cache data from Listly setting page.

#13

So, a week or so later, only one list is appearing in my “random” list as well as my other widget. How do I get ALL my lists to show up? Isn’t that the purpose? Why is it only showing the last list that was updated?

#14

@planetMitch Is your plugin updated to 2.1? Also did you try clearing the cache on the Listly Plugin settings page? We’ve been trying to reproduce this on our servers, but failing so far. We will look into this more today. I will post an update soon.

#15

@planetmitch, On your site (http://blog.planet5d.com/), we see two listly widgets (list of lists and random list).

Can you share the screenshot of your random list setting?

Also, what cache plugin do you use? There’s a chance that your cache plugin is caching one list (first random list generated) and displaying it because that front page is completely cached. We’d have to look at a solution to still switch the list out.

cc: @milan_kaneria

#16

It has been a while… I took off the widget for a while hoping you’d updated things

I did a screen recording of my experience - I’m getting “no lists found get cracking” messages

http://screencast.com/t/vRcWFMyhQ

I’m on listly plugin (copy and paste from my admin) Version 2.1 | By Milan Kaneria | View details

#17

Mitch, there’s a new version that’s in testing with updated sidebar widgets. The issue is caused by caching and we have an ajax based work around in the upcoming version. I will post an update by end of this week.

1 Like
#18

Any updates? It is 3 weeks since your update. Just installed it again to test on my blog and I don’t see anything new.

#19

Mitch, we just released an update last night. We’ve had this update for a while, but it had not gone through some final testing since we were busy with the mobile app we are working on. Hope this release helps with the issue you are facing.

#20

Its seemsa great Idea got one for me