WordPress Etsy Widget

January 18th, 2010 by: joshua

You 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.

The term ‘Etsy’ is a trademark of Etsy, Inc.  This application uses the Etsy API but is not endorsed or certified by Etsy, Inc.



81 Comments on “WordPress Etsy Widget”

  1. hilary says:

    I solved my issue: for anyone else using Xampp(lite) and getting the “Call to undefined function curl_init()” fatal error, try searching google for curl_init() and xampp. One solution is to go to “C:\xampp\php”, search for “php.ini”, in that file search for “extension=php_curl.dll” and uncomment it. So simple!

  2. ashley says:

    Hi there :) I run a WP multisite network, and have this plugin enabled for all of my users to activate/use on their sites. One of my users told me that she isn’t seeing the widget available on the widgets screen, so I logged in under her account to check, and was able to verify. The plugin is on the list for users to activate/deactivate, but activating it doesn’t make the widget appear on their appearance -> widgets screen for some reason. Any ideas?

  3. ashley says:

    ETA: I have also tried network enabling the plugin, but this had no effect on the issue.

  4. Melissa says:

    Hi Chris,
    Excellent Etsy widget! I absolutely love it. I installed it at http://diapercakeforbabyshower.com/ and it looks great and I am already seeing more traffic to our etsy site.

    I am interested in having a similar custom widget made for me. I will pay. Please email me to discuss if you are interested. It will probably be really easy for you since you already made this one.

    Thanks,
    Melissa

  5. Stefan Witte says:

    Hi Chris,

    I’m working on the website of my girlfriend (http://www.jnnk.eu) – and I’m trying to change the appearance of the link-text.
    I want it positioned left (tricked it now with a lot of  ‘s) – and most importantly, the font to be changed to Courier.
    I’ve tried alot of things but can’t seem to get it working.
    Please help?

    Best,
    Stefan

  6. Steven says:

    Hi Chris-

    I’ve followed your install instructions, activated Etsy Widget in Plugins, and set it up in Widgets, but the only thing it does is show the text of the Title, and this not a link. Any thoughts on what I’m doing wrong?

    Thanks.

  7. Steven says:

    Very cool. Got it to work. Thanks for your help.

  8. Tuhannuak says:

    Hi!
    send you post: to my @hosutioi twitter

  9. julie says:

    I LOVE this plugin!!! I’m working on developing sites for my ebook subscribers. I’m using headwaythemes. I’m having trouble by only being able to use the plugin on 1 sidebar widget when creating a static site.

    For example I have it on 1 sidebar which will be the parent page but then on the blog page I need it to appear in a different widget and it doesn’t show again as an available widget to use.

    Any suggestions?

  10. Celeste says:

    I’m having the same problem that Chris mentioned above:
    I’ve followed your install instructions, activated Etsy Widget in Plugins, and set it up in Widgets, but the only thing it does is show the text of the Title, and this not a link.

    Can you help? Thanks!

  11. Alexandra says:

    Hi, I’ve done the easy install and drag and drop into my main sidebar, and nothing appears. I’ve uninstalled/reinstalled the widget, and still nothing – very frustrating – would love some help please!

  12. bettijo @ PagingSupermom.com says:

    I saw Michelle requested earlier to have the links open in a new window? Is there a workaround for this or is this something you might consider adding?

  13. bettijo @ PagingSupermom.com says:

    Thanks for the plugin by the way… sorry I didn’t mention that before ;)

  14. Jenn @ Home is Where You Start From says:

    Hi,

    great plugin, but I cannot get it to work. I’ve installed it and moved the widget to the sidebar, it looks a bit different then the example you have above- I think my problem is the very last box is titled ” cache location” and inside it is /tmp -I’m wondering if I need to put something there, and if so, what? please speak slowly- I am a computer klutz…! It shows on my sidebar but just with the title, no boxes, links or anything else.

    thanks :)

  15. Jon Baldry says:

    Hi Joshua,

    Great plugin and it’s working fine with one slight niggle. When I put a title into the Title: box for some reason when it shows on the web site, any capitalisation is removed, i.e. A selection from the Etsy shop becomes a selection from the etsy shop. I’m using the Version 1.0.8 plugin and WordPress 3.3.1. Any ideas on how to correct this please??

    Many thanks for your time.

  16. joshua says:

    @Bettijo This can be done by setting the target attribute of the links. Anyone with a little bit of php knowledge could do this, but it’s not a feature I’m going to include in the actual release.

    @Jenn You need to set this to a directory where php has write access. Ask your hosting provider.

    @Jon This is set by your theme. Look in the file style.css of your theme.

  17. ilana says:

    hi there – here’s the error i got
    Warning: shuffle() expects parameter 1 to be array, null given in /homepages/25/d321422027/htdocs/sugarandtype/wp-content/plugins/etsy-widget/etsy-widget.php on line 104

    any ideas?!

  18. Ilana says:

    mine’s still not working – if i turn random off it looks to be working – but nothing shows up! – no error though

  19. Kevin says:

    Thank you for making this. I wanted to suggest some features that would be very useful.

    1. Currently neither etsy mini or any other etsy widget that I can find lets you filter products by keyword. It seems in the day an age of niche marketing and targeting your audience this would have been available out of the box.

    2. Short code insertion and keyword parameter overrides. I would be great to directly insert this in my post as a 1×3 or 1×4 targeted by keyword. Perhaps something like [etsywidget keyword=”hat”]

  20. Emma says:

    Hi I like this widget, but when I added new items to my etsy shop, the widget did not reflect the new items but rather maintained images of the old items instead; it doesn’t seem to be updating and keeping current with my actual shop

  21. Emma says:

    oh i got it

  22. Emma M. says:

    Etsy now requires all plugins to access their API via HTTPS. Will this app be updated soon to meet this requirement? I hope so, because I love using it, but can’t anymore!

  23. cheyenne says:

    Hi Emma, Thanks for pointing it out. I haven’t looked at it in a long time but I’ll see what I can do. ~joshua

  24. Dana Huff says:

    Hi there,

    I just wanted to say that I went through the plugin code and changed the instances of “http” to “https” and it seems to have resolved the issue Emma M. was mentioning.

  25. Lee says:

    Just confirming that the fix is incredibly easy and you can do it easily enough in the wordpress interface by simply entering the plugin editor and changing the line

    $url = ‘http://openapi.etsy.com/v2/public/shops/’ . $uid . ‘/listings/active?

    to

    $url = ‘https://openapi.etsy.com/v2/public/shops/’ . $uid . ‘/listings/active?

  26. Bill Weaver says:

    It looks like there is a problem with your current version and WordPress 3.8.1 I’m running for a client. In a sidebar the widget prevents any other widget below it from loading and on a home page bottom sidebar set up, eliminates the background CSS code.

    Is there a work around, or is this just an incompatibility issue between your current version and the current WP version?

  27. Nick says:

    Bill Weaver – this is happening because it is erroring out due to the http/https issue mentioned above and wordpress is terminating further display for some reason. Applying the simple fixes listed above should fix your problem. (They did for me.)

  28. David says:

    I also made this change and the Etsy plugin issue was resolved successfully. Also, a slider plugin was also not working and this change caused that plugin issue to be resolved as well.

  29. Julie C says:

    I also tried to make the above change but it did not work for me. Is there anything else I can do? Perhaps delete the plug in and re-install it?

  30. Julie C says:

    Never mind. I tried it again and it did work! Thanks!

  31. Drew says:

    Another option is the “Advanced Etsy Widget” (just google it) – it even has caching so your WordPress pages stay lightning fast.

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Cheyenne Weil, Joshua Coxwell