Showcase Sidebar is the extra cool widget in Twenty Eleven theme
Starting from WordPress version 3.2, there are actually two default themes which are included right when you ever first installed a WP blog.
Since I have used WP, which was the version 2.9.2, there was always only one default template, which was Kubrick theme, very simple theme, but appealing, if you still remember.
Since this new template, that’s called Twenty Eleven theme (2011) is included, there are huge amount of wp users which use this template as their blog or website’s theme, but there are also still a lot of people who are using Twenty Ten theme.
This is a fact based on my site’s traffic stats which are still looking any tutorials which are related to Twenty Ten them.
Which of course, this flexibility and two default theme alternatives having difference features and capabilities.
One of essential difference than definitely can be noticed by everyone is the showcase sidebar extra new widget if you activate and use Twenty Eleven theme.
This Showcase sidebar wordpress widget however, you will not find if you are using another theme, even if you use the other default template, which is TwentyTen.
Showcase Sidebar doesn’t always work?
I have noticed recently, when I looked around inside wordpress 3.3 beta version, after installing a new blog offline in my computer, I accidentally looked around in the widgets page.
To be honest, since I don’t use this default template for all of my blogs, I have never tried this showcase sidebar wordpress new widget.
So I have tested it by treating it as the other widgets, like links, calendar, categories, and so on, then I looked my front-end blog it didn’t show up.
I then thought, for some newbies, they would also think the same, what the use of it, and why this won’t work if we apply stuff as we do with other widgets, is it special?
To answer those questions, I personally think, yes, we must do something “special” and different to use this widget, different than other widgets we have been using so far.
How to use Showcase Sidebar wordpress Twenty Eleven widget
If you ever wonder why you have tried to add showcase sidebar into your Twenty Eleven’s sidebar and not working it out, this is because it is a bit complicated.
Basically, you have to set your page to have showcase template, and to use its special widget, you will need to make your post (or posts) to be non “standard” format and then use Twenty Eleven Ephemera widget.
What I mean by this is whenever you create a post, by default it is set to “Standard”. To understand this whole thing, I have posted a video about post format wordpress 3+ using standard, aside and gallery formats.
So just to make it clearer, in your right sidebar, you will see “Format” tab under the “Publish” button.
See this screenshot of the newest wp dashboard;
So in order to use this special widget, you will need to set your post to anything but NOT Standard and you will be able to use this new widget.
One thing though, to be able to see the widget, you also need to use the showcase setting to your site.
Update: the video is already posted with the title Twenty Eleven showcase template.
I am planning to create the video post about it this week, so if you are really interested, feel free to subscribe via email or reader, as I really feel it’s much easier to explain about how to display showcase sidebar in a video.