(Beta Site)Question and Answer Forum Plugin

Several people have requested a widget that they can place in the side bar which displays the “question list”. I plan to include this in the next update but if you want to use it before then here is what you need to do.

First you need to find somewhere to add the code. You can do this in the plugin say before the closing ?> in questions.php or you can put it in the functions.php file in your theme.

We first need to register a new siderbar widget. The code I’m using for that is

add_action('plugins_loaded','qanda_plugins_loaded');
function qanda_plugins_loaded(){
register_sidebar_widget('Recent Questions', 'qanda_recent_questions_widget');
}
This means that after the plugins are loaded a new siderbar widget called “Recent Questions” will be registered. When this widget is to be displayed the function qanda_recent_questions_widget will be called. Next we need to define this function. To do this add the following code:

function qanda_recent_questions_widget($args){
extract($args);
echo $before_widget . $before_title;
echo "Recent Questions";
echo $after_title;
$atts['questions'] = 5;
echo q_list_questions($atts,"");
echo $after_widget;
}


This uses the function q_list_questions which generates the output for the list_questions shortcode but calls it in a way which means it can be used as a widget.

Now all the coding is done. You just need to go into the widgets page in the wordpress admin and add the widget to your side bar.

The complete code you need to add is

add_action('plugins_loaded','qanda_plugins_loaded');
function qanda_plugins_loaded(){
register_sidebar_widget('Recent Questions', 'qanda_recent_questions_widget');
}
function qanda_recent_questions_widget($args){
extract($args);
echo $before_widget . $before_title;
echo "Recent Questions";
echo $after_title;

which you can place before the last ?> in questions.php in the plugins folder or in functions.php in your theme.