Wordpress Etsy Widget
January 18th, 2010 by: joshuaYou may have noticed the new Etsy thumbnail display in the sidebar. I coded this up last week because Cheyenne wasn’t happy with Etsy Mini. The issue was that there wasn’t an easy way to adjust the background colors and other styling elements because Etsy Mini embeds an iframe or flash object. While poking around for a solution I discovered that Etsy has a public API so I went ahead and signed up as a developer and created this simple plugin for Wordpress. It has more or less the same layout as Etsy Mini but it inherits css styles from the sidebar and it’s possible to customize it in your theme’s css file by using the ‘etsy’ class.
It’s free and licensed under GPL so go ahead and install it on your own wordpress site. Download it from wordpress.org and if you have trouble leave a comment here and I’ll try to help.
Here is a screenshot of the admin interface.
January 19th, 2010 at 11:29 am
Hi, I’m trying to use your plugin for an etsy shop on my website. Its a wordpress and I can’t figure out how to get to the sidebar that you show in the above screenshot. The only option wordpress is giving me is to edit the actual code of the plugin which I don’t think I should do. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
January 19th, 2010 at 7:11 pm
On your wordpress admin dashboard click on “appearance” then “widgets” (it should be right under themes). After you have activated the plugin it will appear on this page under “available widgets.” Drag and drop the widget onto your sidebar (right). Of course, this assumes that your theme supports widgets (most do). There could be one or more sidebars available and if the names aren’t obvious you may have to experiment to see where it appears.
If you’re having trouble installing it. The easiest way is to choose “Plugins” then “Add New” from you admin dashboard. Enter “Custom Etsy” into the search box and it should come up. Click install (far right).
February 22nd, 2010 at 9:09 pm
This plugin is awesome, and works awesomely in the sidebar. I would love it if you would consider posting instructions to use your code in the main page area of a wordpress site as opposed to just as a sidebar widget. The existing Etsy Mini code really doesn’t fit in with most websites.
March 2nd, 2010 at 7:05 am
Hey I’m having trouble getting 3 columns to show up. Do you have any idea why I can only get 2 columns even though my settings are set for 3 columns?
(note: I tried making them 50×50 just to see if it was a size issue and that did not work)
March 2nd, 2010 at 3:35 pm
Hi Chris, Thanks for the bug report. I guess I didn’t test the column layouts too thoroughly. It turned out to just be a typo. It should be fixed if you upgrade to version 1.0.4.
March 2nd, 2010 at 3:38 pm
Hi Amelia, I’m glad you like the plugin. When I have some free time I’ll look into creating a tag for embedding the widget into articles. I’m not sure when that will happen, but I’ll send you a note if it does.
March 3rd, 2010 at 1:15 pm
Hello Joshua
Thanks for the great plugin. Much nicer then the Etsy one that shows links to Etsy – not just your Etsy account but just Etsy frontpage or whatever category you happen to post in.
I am also having the same issue as the other Chris. When I select two columns or two rows it still only shows me one picture. I am running 1.0.4, auto installed through wordpress.
Thanks much
March 3rd, 2010 at 2:09 pm
Hi Chris W,
Since you only have 2 items in your etsy shop it obviously won’t show more than that. Additional rows and columns won’t display even though they show up in the HTML. I see on your site that only a single item is showing. I suspect that the problem is simply a stale cache. The cache is refreshed every 6 hours. The other item should show up then. You can clear the cache manually if you log into your shell account.
On a unix server, the command would be:
rm -f /tmp/etsy*
March 3rd, 2010 at 5:10 pm
I tried the waiting thing and
… Looks like you’re right! Both items are showing up now!
Thanks much!