March 18th, 2008 
Tim Today is the first in a regular weekly series, Tuesday Tech Troubles and Triumphs. I think I’ll probably have more troubles than triumphs to share, so let me start with one I’m having now. A client of mine wants his WordPress archives to be displayed in an expandable/collapsible format in the sidebar. He referred me to this blog on blogspot.com as an example. The code that displays the archives is a widget written by Google software engineer I’ve been looking for a similar plugin, because that would be much faster (and cheaper for him). I’ve found several, including this one by Ady Romantika that would be perfect.
The trouble: they are all only available as widgets and his heavily customized blog is not widgetized. Unless I have a better suggestion from one of my readers, I’ll have to reverse engineer a widget into a straight plugin. I have almost no time to do this. Please comment with suggestions or WordPress plugin stories of your own. Hopefully by next Tuesday, I’ll have turned this trouble into a triumph.
I’ll now tag five unsuspecting techies and turn this into a meme:
Merlin, Merlin’s Minute
Ian, Failure is the Key to Success
Joe, JoeTech.com
Chuck, D is for Dad
Rob, All Things Seen and Unseen
Gentlemen, start your engines.
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I have faith that you’ll figure it out, one way or another!
Nissa’s last blog post..Spring cleaning is in order!
Btw- I don’t like how it rats me out that I’m using Microsoft… I can’t help it that hubby hasn’t installed my settings for Linux on my laptop, yet!
Nissa’s last blog post..Spring cleaning is in order!
@Nissa: lol! That’s ok, after my post on Opera v. Firefox, I get comments observing that I’m still using FF, as I am just now. For some reason, Opera won’t recognize my WP login.
Thanks for the comments, your lusciousness!
Tim – Thanks for the tag. I’m going to respond on another blog I update occasionally which can be found at anoccasionalinterruption.wordpress.com
As for your challenge… would a modified version of this code get you closer to what you are after without a plugin?
Chuck’s last blog post..You can’t get to heaven with a hot air balloon
@Chuck: Thanks for the tip, Chuck. It looks like that might be workable (I can hardly think for the noise in the house today), as long as I can nest the archives in a year/month/post fashion. I’ll give it a shot as soon as my head stops pounding. Maybe after a nap.
In the meantime, I’m going to check out your other blog.
Hi Tim,
Thanks for the tag. Definitely unsuspecting techie here. I’ll try to get onto it in the next couple of days. I’m just rebuilding a laptop for someone after a failed hard disc, so hopefully it won’t be the subject of my post.
Ian
Ian’s last blog post..Trying out my manual lenses
Ian: Thanks for commenting. Laptop repair can be a pain, but I’m sure you’ll breathe new life into the beast. I’ll look for your post, I bet you’ve got some good tech stories up your sleeve. See you on the Buzz!
Ok, Tim. Caught me on my blindside with that one. Hmm, will look into the archiving thing and get back to you. As for my [url=http://merlinsminute.com/2008/03/08/new-machine-in-the-house/]present issue with Vi$ta[/url]….am planning on installing XP over it and then turning my desktop into a pure Linux machine that can have several different distros on it at once. Just have too many apps I’ve bought over the years that won’t run in Linux under Wine and they are much nee3ded for my projects.
MerlinsMinute’s last blog post..New machine in the house!
New machine in the house!…
Going back to a few posts I made about me deciding on a new computer, reworking the desktop or building a new one….I decided on buying a new one. A laptop actually. And it has Vista on it. Before you reach for that submit button below the comment…
Hey Tim!
Any chance this page will give you some ideas? http://automattic.com/code/widgets/themes/ Has to do with widgetizing themes that otherwise aren’t capable.
MerlinsMinute’s last blog post..New machine in the house!
Looking to add a widget to your blog?…
But it doesn’t accept widgets! What to do? A friend is having a similar issue with a blog for his customer and I came across this post over at Automattic.com about Widgetizing Themes. Maybe this might help some others looking for some help with t…
@MerlinsMinute: Thanks for the pointer! It’s a great way to widgetize a theme, but… I don’t want to widgetize the theme. I want to touch this theme as little as possible. If I had my way, I’d do a complete redesign and certainly make it widget-ready. If I can, I’d like to just add a little code to the sidebar and be done. Now, for another client’s site, this will definitely be the way to go! Thanks!
Hi Tim,
Thanks, the laptop went just fine. After a bit of thought, here’s my post: http://blog.ijhedges.com/2008/03/22/tuesday-tech-troubles-and-triumphs/
Ian’s last blog post..Tuesday Tech Troubles and Triumphs