Custom Widgets 2.0 Released

Tom Slayer who is the author of the Custom Widgets plugin that I wrote a review about on Performancing.com back in November 2008, sent me a note that he has released version 2.0 of the plugin. One of the things that worried me about the plugin is its interface for how you configured widgets. Thankfully, Tom has redesigned the interface from the ground up so it’s more intuitive.

On top of the new interface design, two new features found their way into version 2.0. Widget name display and more organized management.

Sleeker Custom Widget Interface

So how does Custom Widgets weigh in against Kaspar’s Widget Context plugin? Well, I’ll have to use Custom Widgets to let you know but I moved away from Custom Widgets at first because of their complicated interface. Since that has changed, I may find myself switching back to custom widgets. While I enjoy using Widget Context on this blog and enjoy Kaspar’s work, the plugin does have some weird configuration quirks in that, the configuration settings I give a widget never seem to take affect after the first try. You have to save the configuration twice. I also know that Kaspar’s is a busy bee and doesn’t have much free development time to devote to the plugin so at this point, it looks like Custom Widgets is more actively developed than Widget Context.

What I think will be interesting is seeing if any one of these two Widget management systems find there way into the core of WordPress 2.8 in some form or fashion. Or, if we’ll see something completely different.