Theme Widgets

Stuart Ugelow figures most theme designers aren't up to the task of coding new widgets. I think that's fair enough to say. So he came up with a Theme Widgets plugin that is meant to make it easy for theme designers to create widgets.

Here's how it works: the theme designer adds any number of "widget-*.php" files to the theme directory. Each widget has its name in a comment (like page templates) and the rest of the file is output. You can fill it with HTML or template tags or PHP. Your widgets will then appear as options in the Theme Widgets for your users.

This will save the theme designer a few steps. This simplicity comes at a cost however: more files in the theme directory, more files for WordPress to look for and load every time someone views the blog. The milliseconds add up quickly when the traffic comes calling, so always do your best to optimize your themes for speed.