Site Admin User Guide

11. Widgets (Dynamic Objects)

Note: This is an advanced level topic

Under Construction

A widget - otherwise known as a dynamic object, or sometimes referred to as a 'Template Widget' is an item that can be placed into web content or a template in order to provide some advanced functionality.

Template widgets refer to a subset of Widgets, and are small blocks of html code which can be inserted into site templates in order to pull that functionality out of the template. You may want to do this if:

  1. You have a lot of templates with repeated sections of code . moving this out into a template widget will allow this code to be maintained in one place only.
  2. You want the content of the widget to be dependent on other variables, or use system variables. For example, html that only displays if a user is logged in and does not otherwise.

Displaying the content of a widget only if a user is logged in is simple . simply tick the .requires login. button on the widget and it will only display to users who are logged in.

To display specific html within a widget for different user types, use the code documented herein under the header: Differentiating between logged in / not logged in users and different user types.

Examples of the Dynamic Object type of widgets are: filtered lists of items from database tables (such as listings of news items), menus and web forms. A library of pre-built widgets may have been provided with your web site.

Widgets are added to content using the widget buttons on the Rich Text Editor if these are available to you.

Recordset Widgets

The recordset type of widget simply lists items which are returned from a query to the database, either from one table of data or multiple linked tables. Recordset widgets normally contain the ability to 'drill down' into the item listing to get more information on each item listed, and may therefore comprise of several templated sets of data.


Form Widgets

Form widgets are essentially web forms which can be placed into your web pages or templates, to do all kinds of things from searching data and displaying results, to allowing a sign up to a maililng list, or providing a contact form which emails the results to you.


Menu Widgets

The menu widget allows a menu to be placed into your web pages or templates.


Custom Code Widgets

Custom Code widgets allow you to run custom written PHP code directly in pages and templates.

Further Support


For further help and support, please contact Paragon Digital on 0775 646 0555.