“Advanced Activity Widget” Documentation by “Broady” http://www.wpinsite.com


“Advanced Activity Widget” v2.0

Created: 5 February 2012
Updated to v2.0: 17 April 2012
By: Broady
Website: http://www.wpinsite.com
CodeCanyon Page:
Advanced Social Widget

Thank you for purchasing the Advanced Activity Widget WordPress plugin. If you have any questions that are beyond the scope of this help file, please feel free to contact me via my user page contact form here. Thanks so much and enjoy the plugin!


Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Requirements
  3. Installation
  4. Configuration & Usage
  5. Shortcodes
  6. F.A.Q
  7. Translating
  8. Support
  9. Change Log

Advanced Activity Widget


A) Introduction - top

Advanced Activity Widget Adds an advanced tabbed widget box to your sidebar giving users the ability to display your WordPress latest comments, most recent posts, most popular posts of all time and WordPress tag cloud.

Advanced Activity Widget is highly customizable and allows you to display unlimited amounts of popular posts, latest posts and most recent comments and tags.

You determine the amount of posts or comments to display. You can enable or disable displaying a post thumbnail or comment Gravatar. Advanced Activity Widget contains built-in post tracking to determine your most popular posts. Easily display the amount of views next to each post excerpt. Determine the amount of WordPress tags to display.

Advanced Activity Widget Feature Breakdown:

Built-in Post Views

Built-in Post Views
Once you activate the plugin, it starts automatically storing all post views in your WordPress database.

Display or hide Post Thumbnails

Display or hide Post Thumbnails
Through the widget configuration settings you can determine whether to display a post thumbnails for the most popular posts and latest posts.

Display or hide Comment Gravatar

Display or hide Comment Gravatar
Through the widget configuration settings you can determine whether to display a comment Gravatar if available.

Post thumbnail automatically resized using latest TimThumb script

Post thumbnail automatically resized using latest TimThumb script
You determine the post thumbnail size and the post thumbnail images are automatically resized using the latest TimThumb thumbnail script.

Display date & time of post under most recent posts excerpt

Display date & time of post under most recent posts excerpt
Under the Most Recent tab excerpt display the post date and time is displayed in a clean readable format.

Display WordPress Tag Cloud

Display WordPress Tag Cloud
You determine whether to display the WordPress Tag Cloud. you can select how many tags to display.

Use shortcode to display post view count for certain post

Use shortcode to display post view count for certain post
Using the built-in shortcode [AAW_Views] you can display the amount of post views in your WordPress post.

The Widget has been developed to he highest quality standards and tested in all major modern browsers.


B) Requirements - top

These are the main required settings:


C) Installation - top

Option 1: Zip upload method.

You can use the ZIP upload method, which is detailed in the screencast below. I've taken the time to also detail the basic usage steps in this screencast, so if you get lost, please watch the video for pointers:

 

Option 2: Manual installation method

Manual installation is easy and takes fewer than a few minutes.

  1. Unzip plugin file.
  2. Upload the the plugin folder "advanced-activity-widget" (not just the files in it!) to your `wp-content/plugins` folder. If you're using FTP, use 'binary' mode.
  3. Activate the plugin through the 'Plugins' menu in WordPress.
  4. Navigate to the WordPress Dashboard widgets page, drag the "Advanced Activity Widget" widget onto one of your WordPress theme sidebars and configure its specific settings. (Configuration settings listed below)
  5. A few of the settings have a default value, replace if necessary. Hover over text-field labels for details descriptions and instructions.
  6. You're done. Enjoy.

  7. Note: If you have trouble installing, see the WordPress Codex
    http://codex.wordpress.org/Managing_Plugins#Manual_Plugin_Installation for more helpful info.


D) Configuration & Usage - top

The plugin is simple to use and does not need any user input to function. After you have activated the plugin and navigated to the Widgets page in your WordPress Dashboard, you will be presented with the available widgets available for your theme.

To use the plugin in your theme file simply drag a copy of the "Advanced Social Widget" widget panel into one of your theme sidebars.

Activate the plugin

Once you have dragged the widget over to your theme sidebar the widget option will expand. Read the below settings guide to get an understanding of what each option does. After you have added / edited or deleted any of the configuration setting click on the "Save" button located at the bottom of the widget panel for the changes to take effect.

The Widget Settings
This is the core of the Advanced Activity Widget WordPress plugin. Here you can configure all the settings for the plugin. The widget panel is divided into four sections, the General Settings, Popular Tab, Latest tab & Comments Tab sections.

  • General Settings:
    • Widget Width: This is where you determine the actual width in pixels of the widget box. For readability the minimum size for the widget should not be less than 250px.

  • Popular Tab:
    • Display the popular tab: By default the popular tab will be displayed. Uncheck to disable the popular tab.
    • Display icon for popular tab: By default the post thumbnail will be displayed next to the post excerpt. If no thumbnail is available a default image will be used. If you do not wish to display a post thumbnail here be sure to uncheck the checkbox.
    • Popular tab icon size: You determine the size of the post thumbnail. Enter the size of the post thumbnail. IE 50 which will equal 50 pixels height and width.
    • Amount of popular entries to display: Enter the number of posts you wish to be displayed under the Popular tab. IE 5 will display the 5 most popular posts.
    • Amount of characters to display before trunicating entry: You can specify the total amount of characters to display for the post excerpt. When the post limit is reached the '...' characters will be displayed.
      For readability a limit of 50 characters is recommended.
  • Latest Tab:
    • Display the latest tab:By default the latest tab will be displayed. Uncheck to disable the latest tab.
    • Display icon for latest tab: By default the post thumbnail will be displayed next to the post excerpt. If no thumbnail is available a default image will be used. If you do not wish to display a post thumbnail here be sure to uncheck the checkbox.
    • Latest tab icon size: You determine the size of the post thumbnail. Enter the size of the post thumbnail. IE 50 which will equal 50 pixels height and width.
    • Amount of latest entries to display: Enter the number of posts you wish to be displayed under the Latest tab. IE 5 will display the 5 latest posts.
    • Amount of characters to display before trunicating entry: You can specify the total amount of characters to display for the post excerpt. When the post limit is reached the '...' characters will be displayed.
      For readability a limit of 50 characters is recommended.
  • Comments Tab:
    • Display the comments tab: By default the comments tab will be displayed. Uncheck to disable the comments tab.
    • Display Gravatar icon for comments tab: By default the post author Gravatar will be displayed next to the author name and comments. If no Gravatar is available a default comment icon will be used.
      If you do not wish to display comment Gravatar here be sure to uncheck the checkbox.
    • Comments tab Gravatar icon size: You determine the size of the comment Gravatar. Enter the size of the Gravatar. IE 50 which will equal 50 pixels height and width.
    • Amount of comments to display: Enter the number of comments you wish to be displayed under the Comments tab. IE 5 will display the 5 latest comments.
    • Amount of characters to display before trunicating entry: You can specify the total amount of characters to display for the post excerpt. When the post limit is reached the '...' characters will be displayed.
      For readability a limit of 50 characters is recommended.
  • Tags Tab:
    • Display the tags tab: By default the tags tab will be displayed. Uncheck to disable the tags tab.
    • Amount of tags to display: Enter the amount of tags to display.
Plugin Configuration Panel

 

E) Shortcodes - top

Advanced Activity Widget has a built-in shortcode to display the number of post views for a certain post. To display the post view for a certain post use the shortcode [AAW_Views].
E.G to display the post view through the WordPress WYSIWYG editor add the below markup to the editor.
[AAW_Views] views.

This will display "125 views" for example.


 

F) F.A.Q - top

How to I hide certain thumbnail and their functionality?
You have the ability to disable the displaying of all three thumbnail images.
To disable a thumbnail from being displayed for that specific tab, simply uncheck the checkbox for that specific tab and that thumbnail will not be displayed.

Part of the Widget box is missing or overflowing outside my sidebar
You have the ability to define the actual width of the widget box. By default the width of the widget width is set to 250px.
If part of the widget box is missing or overflowing change the width of the widget settings so that it matches the size of your theme sidebar.
Try decreasing the widget box width size to say 240. There is no need to add the (px) pixels as this is added automatically for you.

The tab functionality is not working
If you click the tabs and nothing happens you probably do not have the JQuery library loaded in your current WordPress theme.
The plugin requires the JQuery JavaScript library to be able to function. The plugin uses the WordPress built in function: wp_enqueue_script('jquery') to ensure that the JQuery library is loaded only once.
If you cannot view the JQuery library in your source code you may need to add it manually in your current theme.


G) Translating - top

Advanced Social Widget makes use of the common gettext system for translating content, which is the same used by WordPress. If you wish to translate the Advanced Social Widget plugin to your language, please consider the following steps:

  1. Download and install POEDIT at http://www.poedit.net/
  2. Launch POEDIT and click on File → New Catalog
  3. On the Project Info tab, fill in only the first 4 fields.
  4. On the Paths tab, fill in the first text field with the physical path to the Advanced Social Widget folder, inside the WP plugin folder. (Example: C:\mywordpress\wp-content\plugins\advanced-social-widget\)
  5. On the Keywords tab, click the button called "new item" and insert the "_e" (without quotes) string
  6. Do the same for the "__" string (without quotes)
  7. Click Ok.
  8. Then a list of all English strings found is prompted.
  9. Translate each string to your desired language.
  10. Save the catalog as YOUR-LOCALE-CODE.mo (Example, for italian: IT.mo)
If you're having issues or for further details on how properly translate gettext content, please refer to the official WordPress documentation here, or do a Google search about it.


H) Support - top

For any support or suggestion please feel free to contact me via my user page contact form here or visit the WPInsite website or on the CodeCanyon.com Forum. I'll try to reply as soon as possible.


I) Change Log - top

17 April 2012
*v2.0

Version 1.0: Initial Plugin Release


Sincerely, Broady...