Suggestions for Theme Blvd Simple Contact Widget

[viper]

I know the Simple Contact widget is meant to be simple, and overall it is very nice – it has the cute little icons and everything displays cleanly. However, my client wants a few simple customizations that are not allowed for in this widget, like a physical address, and also “Contact Us” to “Contact Form” – but “Contact Us” is located deep in framework/api/locals.php, which if edited will be lost on a theme update ).

I’ve looked at quite a few other simple contact widgets and they all suck in some way – either they leave out one form of contact info or another, they need to be styled extensively, or something else. Or, they somehow demand more time than I want to give to a simple box of contact info.

So, although the built-in “Theme Blvd Simple Contact” widget is meant to be simple, it might be nice to still have a little more flexibility here. Specifically:

• Add a physical address field.
• Allow editing of labels for fields.
• Allow fields to be re-ordered.
• Activate/deactivate icons for each field.

Probably not high on the list of priorities but it would be a nice tweak. Thank you.

Topic

[Jason Bobich]

Thanks, all good suggestion and are noted.

and also “Contact Us” to “Contact Form” – but “Contact Us” is located deep in framework/api/locals.php, which if edited will be lost on a theme update ).

It sounds like this is probably an important thing you’re missing that will help you out in dealing with similar issues — I just wanted to make sure you’re aware of that these text strings are all located in one place to actually make them accessible from your child theme without having to drag entire theme files and functions over.

http://dev.themeblvd.com/tutorial/frontend-text-strings/

You can actually even use this plugin to change all of the frontend text strings:

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/theme-blvd-string-swap/

[viper]

Ok thank you. I get the text string concept, and that would help change some of the labeling. But let’s say for now if I wanted to add an address field for example, I see some code for this widget at:

framework/ frontend/ functions/ parts.php

I just copy/pasted the “phone” line and modified it, as well as in the stylesheet. But I’m seeing no additional field in the widget in Admin. Obviously I’m a bit over my head here, and rushing it, but to add an address field would seem to be a matter of just duplicating one of the fields and modifying – which would then get lost on a future theme update.

That’s ok I’m just thinking out loud. I’ll figure something else out. Cheers-

[Jason Bobich]

Yeah, I wasn’t suggesting that changing the text strings would solve your contact widget problems, but just seemed like a general important point you were missing.

While the display of the function is a pluggable function present in the theme that you could edit from a child theme, the widget admin interface is all controlled from that Theme Blvd widget pack plugin. There’s no way to change it, from a Child theme I don’t think.

If a truly custom widget is required for your client right now, you could maybe consider just creating your own widget for them. There are many articles online about using the Widget API from your own child theme or plugin, as this is a pretty popular topic. And I’ve got all the code for the widget pack up online if you want to copy any of it, modify it, and make your own plugin.

See here for specifically everything that creates the simple contact widget using WordPress’s widget api: https://github.com/themeblvd/Theme-Blvd-Widget-Pack/blob/master/widgets/tb-widget-contact.php

http://codex.wordpress.org/Widgets_API#Developing_Widgets

[Author]

Replies