Create custom widgets for the wordpress dashboard

Following on from my previous post on how to remove the default widgets/modules on the wordpress dashboard, today I’m going to show you how quick and simple it is to add your own custom widget/module that displays or does what ever you want it to.

The code below creates to widgets on our dashboard with the title of posts from two different categories,
specified by the cat=x parameter.

 // add 10 most recent post to dashboard from category with id 10
 function blogPost_widget() {
 $recentPosts = new WP_Query();
 $recentPosts->query('showposts=10&cat=10');
 ?>
 <ul>
 <?php
 while ($recentPosts->have_posts()) : $recentPosts->the_post();
 ?>
 <li><a href="<?php  the_permalink(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a></li>
 <?php endwhile; ?>
 </ul>
 <?php
 }
 //adds news widget to dashboard
 function blogNews_widget() {
 $recentPosts = new WP_Query();
 $recentPosts->query('showposts=10&cat=1');
 ?>
 <ul>
 <?php
 while ($recentPosts->have_posts()) : $recentPosts->the_post();
 ?>
 <li><a href="<?php echo the_permalink() ?>" ><?php the_title(); ?></a></li>
 <?php endwhile; ?>
 </ul>
 <?php
 }
 // Create the function use in the action hook

 function add_dashboard_widgets() {
 //this will display titles and links to the blog posts
 wp_add_dashboard_widget('blogPost_widget', 'Recent Blog Posts', 'blogPost_widget');//widget one
 wp_add_dashboard_widget('blogNews_widget', 'Company news', 'blogNews_widget');//widget two
 }

 // Hook into the 'wp_dashboard_setup' action to register our other functions

 add_action('wp_dashboard_setup', 'add_dashboard_widgets');
 

The above code goes into your functions.php file for a template or anywhere in your plugin file. Taken directly from the wordpress documentation, the wp_add_dashboard_widget is the magic function here,
it gives our widget an ID and a name and tells wordpress which function to invoke when creating the widget.
The parameters expected from the wordpress docs are:

<?php wp_add_dashboard_widget($widget_id, $widget_name, $callback, $control_callback ); ?>

Parameters

$widget_id

(integer) (required) an identifying slug for your widget. This will be used as its css class and its key

in the array of widgets.

Default: None

$widget_name

(string) (required) this is the name your widget will display in its heading.

Default: None

$callback

(string) (required) The name of a function you create that will display the actual contents of your widget.

Default: None

$control_callback

(string) (optional) The name of a function you create that will handle submission

of widget options forms, and will also display the form elements.

Further reading: http://codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference/wp_add_dashboard_widget

Remove the default dashboard widgets from WordPress programatically

It’s been over a week since I made a decent post (been extremely busy) so I thought I’d give it a go today.

One of the project’s I’ve had going on requires building a website for a local charity. I discussed it with the charity and agreed on using wordpress. It turns out however, the API for wordpress admin is very minimal and has very little documentation.

I found myself having to develop a large portion of things for the admin section so I’ve had to make do. One of the things I was asked for was to show custom widgets on the dashboard with various things and to remove the default ones…. whaaaaa? Usually wordpress users just manually remove and/or configure these widgets, however the potential users of this are going to be people who have little or no technical expertise… Below is a quick and simple way to remove all the default widgets/modules that are loaded on the dashboard.

function remove_dashboard_widgets() {
    // Globalize the metaboxes array, this holds all the widgets for wp-admin

    global $wp_meta_boxes;
    //remove all default dashboard apps
    unset($wp_meta_boxes['dashboard']['normal']['core']['dashboard_right_now']);
    unset($wp_meta_boxes['dashboard']['normal']['core']['dashboard_recent_comments']);
    unset($wp_meta_boxes['dashboard']['normal']['core']['dashboard_incoming_links']);
    unset($wp_meta_boxes['dashboard']['normal']['core']['dashboard_plugins']);
    unset($wp_meta_boxes['dashboard']['side']['core']['dashboard_quick_press']);
    unset($wp_meta_boxes['dashboard']['side']['core']['dashboard_recent_drafts']);
    unset($wp_meta_boxes['dashboard']['side']['core']['dashboard_primary']);
    unset($wp_meta_boxes['dashboard']['side']['core']['dashboard_secondary']);
}

// Hoook into the 'wp_dashboard_setup' action to register our function

add_action('wp_dashboard_setup', 'remove_dashboard_widgets');

Put that block of code in your functions.php file, if it is a template you’re working on or include it somewhere if it is a plugin.
That’s all there is to it… In my next post I’ll show you how to add your own modules.
Further reading:

http://codex.wordpress.org/Dashboard_Widgets_API