What are widgets?

On Magicdust websites, Widgets let you add and edit content to various parts of your site, giving you extra control over your theme beyond the main content area. Widgets can be used by going to Appearence > Widgets from the Dashboard.

Here you have a collection of available widgets on the left, and a list of widget areas on the right. Widget areas correspond to different areas of your theme, such as the sidebar and footer. You can change the content of these areas by just dragging a widget to a widget area and changing the options on the widget.

Further information on how to add, edit and remove widgets is available in the included help videos. Here is a list of some of the available widgets and how they may be being used:

Black Studio TinyMCE

This widget is one of the most useful. By placing it you get the full visual editor that you edit your pages in, but in the sidebar. To simply place plain text, or embed HTML code, use the regular Text widget.

Custom Menu

This widget will place a menu in the widget area. Menus are a list of pages or links that you can customise. You can create and edit menus by going to Appearance > Menus from your Dashboard. Further information on Menus is available in the included help videos and this support article.

Image Widget

This widget can be used to insert an image into a widget area. Just click Add Image and upload an image from your computer or choose one from your Media Library. When first adding it will resize to about 300 pixels wide. If you wish to change the size, just enter new values into the Width and Height fields. If you wish to display the image at its original size, just delete the numbers from these fields entirely. You can add a link to the image by entering a URL in the Link field and you can align the image by choosing from the Align dropdown. In some widget areas you can line images up in a row by aligning every image to the Left or Right.

Text

Use this widget to place plain text or HTML into a widget area. As it supports HTML you can use this widget to place things like Facebook Plugins, Twitter Feeds, YouTube embeds, or any other piece of content that asks you to place an 'embed code' onto your website. Just copy the code and paste it into the widget.

Catalyst | Excerpts

An incredibly versatile widget that allows you to display content from other parts of your site in a widget area. You can display excerpts from recent blog posts or a particular page. After choosing what to display, you can choose to either show the full content of the page/posts or an excerpt by changing the Content Type. If you choose Excerpt you can limit how many characters (letters) are displayed by choosing a Custom Character Limit. If you stick with the Default Word Limit the widget will show the first 50 words of each page/post. Additionally you can choose to display the page/post's featured image as a thumbnail and the publication date etc. If you have set Content Type to Excerpt or placed a More Tag on the page the widget will place a More button allowing the user to click through to read the rest. You can change the text of this button by editing the Read More Text field.

Notice: Be aware that on some websites the developers have set up the widget to be used for editable clickable panels or other specialised areas. As the set-up details changes from site to site, if you are in doubt about how to use this widget, avoid using it or contact Magicdust Support for further information.

Categories

This widget will display a list of your Blog/News section's Categories. Information on Categories is available in the included manual and help videos.

Magicdust Testimonials & Magicdust Featured Testimonial

These widgets can be used to display your testimonials in a widget area. The Testimonials Widget allows you to display any number of either your latest testimonials or random testimonials, and the Feature Testimonial widget allows you to display a specific testimonial.

Both widgets allow you to add a 'more' button to them that will link to a page with the rest of your testimonials on it. To add the button just enter the label for it into the Read More Text field. Make sure to go to Testimonials > Settings from your Dashboard to set which page this button will link to. More information on testimonials is available in this support article.

Form

This widget is available to Premium Customers or customers who have purchased the Premium Forms plugin. It allows you to display a form in a widget area created in Forms from the Dashboard. Just choose the form you wish to display from the dropdown. You can also choose to display the form's title and description.

Recent Posts

Will display a simple list of any number of recent blog posts.

Search

Will display a search box allowing people to search your site.