I’m very happy to announce the release of the Code To Widget WordPress plugin. The plugin reads files in a directory and automatically creates widgets to be placed in sidebars. It gives developers/designers the ability to create widgets without having to write the widget code every time.
This plugin was initially written out of frustration. About a year ago I got tired of writing widget initialization code over and over again just to create widgets. I also thought it would be cool for people who didn’t know how to write PHP as well to have an easy way to create widgets.
The first version of this plugin has support for the new PHP Class based widgets that were implemented in WordPress 2.8. Though it does technically have support for WordPress 2.8, I focused on 2.9+.
I have already had some feedback from my co-workers, so a 1.1 release should be out soon. It will have support for multiple folders, and also use native PHP functions for reading the files in the folders which should speed up rebuilding of the widgets. I also plan on adding a disable feature for widgets that might not be needed right at the moment, but could be needed in the future.
Please let me know if you have any questions/suggestions regarding the plugin. Feel free to download the plugin here: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/code-to-widget/