Widgets

In University of Adelaide websites, widgets are information boxes that provide additional content and add interest to a site.

Current standard University templates contain widgets as a default feature. Widgets usually appear in a third column of the page in sites using newer University templates or at the top, right-hand side of the content area of the page in older sites and are primarily used on the front page of the site, although they can also be used to add value to other key pages within the site.

Widgets can be used to either display one specific widget per page or to randomly load different widgets each time the page is refreshed/revisited.

Creating and Editing Widgets

Navigate to the widgets/ folder (or widgets_index/ folder for homepage widgets on newer sites) using the files link in TMS, and click on the folder to open. A number of options are displayed alongside of each of the widgets within the folder.

You can edit an existing widget by clicking the edit link alongside the widget. 

To create a new widget, click the copy link alongside one of the existing widgets. Then give the new widget a name that hasn't already been used, making sure that you specify ".html" on the end of the filename. This widget will be a duplicate of the one it was copied from.

The widgets can then be edited in the same way as you would for the main website pages, using TMS.

Including Widgets in a Page

New Templates

Newer University templates check the contents of the widgets folder and automatically include the widgets in the page if they are found. Widgets will be displayed as follows:

Older Templates

For widgets to be displayed in sites using older templates, a line of code must be entered into the top of the page's html code specifying if a random widget or an individual widget file are to be included in the page.

• Random Widget
  Including the following piece of code in the html code at the top of the page, will load a random widget from the site widget folder each time the page is loaded: <!--WFINC="randominc(/sitename/widgets/;cache=0)" -->
  (where sitename is replaced by your website name).
• Specified Widget
  A specific widget is included in the page by using the following statement:
  <!--#include virtual="/sitename/widgets/widgetname.html" -->
  (where sitename is replaced by your website name and the widgetname is replaced by the required widget).

If Your Site Doesn't Have a Widgets Folder

If your website doesn't have a widgets/ folder and you would like to display widgets on your website, please contact the Online Media team who will be able to create this folder for you.