The crazy thing is I think of this as one of my must-have “control” plugins so why I’ve not released it up to now is a mystery. Somehow I forgot it.
I’m only human. 😉
The plugin is called Widget Scheduler and as you might guess from the name, what it does is it adds date and time fields to every single widget. One is to schedule the widget to appear at a particular time, and the other is to disable it. As well as the standard WordPress widgets, it also works with ANY third party plugin or themes that generate new widgets for use in the widgets admin panel.
Just like my other “control” plugins that do similar kinds of things with widgets (such as Ads Manager and Contextual Widgets which use internal rules), the Widget Scheduler plugin gives you control over widgets by time and date.
This is way more useful than you might think at first as it enables you to do clever things like schedule your clients promotions (and your own) in and out at certain times. The beauty of this is, that once it’s all set up you can forget about it.
Here’s an example.
You’re running a series of daily deals and decide to promote them by running ads in one of your sidebars using a text widget and some HTML. You set up each ad so that as one ends the next one starts, and stack them in the sidebar one above the other.
And you’re done.
All without having to be there every day to remove one ad and replace it with another.
Or how about limited time coupon codes? Or event announcements for a conference? Or a one-off video series that starts life as free but then moves to a paid course? Or paid ad spots?
I’ve done all of these on one site or another – that’s how useful this plugin is. The usage of this plugin is only limited by your imagination, and anywhere you want to display dynamic content then this can make your life easier.
The 48 hour sale begins today at 6.00pm GMT (1.00pm EST) and during this sale the plugin comes with full developer (client/flipper) rights. Afterwards it will be an optional extra.
Starting at just $10, there’s every reason to add this to your arsenal.
-Frank Haywood
