This post goes out to all the wordpress users out there who wanted to use Albert Banks’ Netflix Plugin for Wordpress but were frustrated at the plugin not being accessible as a sidebar widget. I added some code to widgetize the plugin that I adapted from this goodreads plugin. If you want you can download what I wrote and then you too can tell the world more than they ever wanted to know about your DVD rental habits.

If you look at the code and see what I added (in the section commented “wigetized” [sic]), you’ll notice that I’m shunning CSS markup for good old table formatting. I also changed a line under “switch display type”to make the widget look pretty in the sidebar. I’ve got it working in the sidebar here if you’re looking for an example of how it will look.

After you ftp the plugin into your wordpress install, you’ll still need to change the Netflix plugin settings in the wordpress backend. To make the table formatting work I have each entry start with a [tr] tag and end with a [/tr] tag.

Also, you’ll need to go to the widgets menu to add the Netflix widget that should appear there.

Maybe you’re thinking that somebody should already have done this by now. You’re right. Except it’s missing. Back in 2006 Chris Stanley over at ongoingprocess.net announced he had made a widget to work with Albert Banks’ as yet unwidgetized Netflix plugin. I searched for it in vain at his site but the link he provided had become broken at some point and was never fixed. Perhaps Stanley will dig it up someday and make it available again. Until then, you can try this out. Hope it works for you.

Tags: code,hacking,wordpress
Categories: coding