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Content Widget User Guide

Self-updating content blocks on websites and blogs
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David Logan
Updated 4 months ago

If you can't watch the above video tutorial, please read the text version below.


  1. What is a content widget?
  2. Basic settings. Content widget design
  3. Item elements settings.
  4. Code format for the content widget.
  5. How to edit and manage code snippets.


Basic settings. Content widget design.


Content WidgetYou start with choosing content feeds for your content widget.

Go to the Feeds Box and select the feeds you want to use in the widget. Press the WITH SELECTED button. Choose the Add to a Content Widget option from the dropdown.



You can also create a new content widget when you generate new content feeds. Press the GENERATE button and choose Add to a Content Widget. Your feeds will be added to a content widget and automatically saved in your Feeds Box. Up to 10 content feeds can be used in one content widget.



Basic settings allow you to set the look and fill of the content widget on your webpage.

Number of items to show – here you set how many content items (articles, products, images) to display in your content widget.

Note: don’t set plenty of items to show. Set a reasonable number in order to make your content block informative but not annoying.

By default, the content will be shown in chronological order starting from the most recent items. Use the Shuffle to show a random set of items.

Separate RSS items with lines - for more visibility you can add a separation 1px line between items.

No follow - will hide content links from search engines and won’t let visitors see where links go.

Open in new window – this option will open all links in the new tab or window. This is a useful feature for keeping your visitors on your page.

Start content block design with its dimensions. Set its width and height in pixels so it would fit the allocated spot on your webpage. Or you can leave it empty for a default (100%) value.

Use content block border - you can add a 1px border around your content block.

You can also play with content font by choosing its family, size, color and background color. You can make your content block look the same as the rest of your website content or, on the other hand, you can make it more noticeable with these basic formatting.

For the advanced design, you can use HTML before and after options. Here you can use open and closing HTML tags, plain text, or even JavaScript code.

To make sure your content block looks the way you want, please, use the PREVIEW option.

To continue with content block settings, go to the Item elements section.


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Item elements settings


Before we start here, you need to understand that each content feed consists of items (news, articles, posts, products), and each item consists of several elements. These elements are channel, title, publication date, description, and link to the original source.



Learn more about content feed structure.


In this section, you set each of these elements separately. First of all, sett the order for these elements. Set what goes first: title, date, link or description. Simply drag and drop element sections.


Channel


Feed's channel usually shows the main topic and content provider.

You can hide this element using the Don't show option.

If you keep this element visible, you can set its font color and background color. Or even specify a background image for your channel.



Title



Like with the Channel, you can set to show or don't show each element of a content item including the title.

Also, you can add HTML before and after the item's title.

But some elements have unique settings. For example, item titles by default are linked to the original source.

But you can set it to show titles as plain text. Make sure the Convert titles into links option is not checked.


Description



Item's description element has several additional options.

For example, you can set a minimum and maximum text length. Use the Random number of characters option for that. If you set a random number as 80-80, each item description will have 80 characters and if it is 80-100 it will show a random number from 80 to 100.

Very often description contains some HTML editing. But you can set which HTML tags you wish to remove and which you wish to keep in the description. Use the Allowed HTML tags option. Simply specify which HTML tags are allowed. Some of them are already specified by default.

Besides, item description can contain other specific content elements like author name, media content, additional text, images, and so on. If you wish to include these additional elements in the description use the add other item elements option.


Link



By default, "more info..." is used as an anchor text for the link. But you can use your own anchor text.


Don't forget to use the PREVIEW option to see changes in your content block.

We are done with the design settings.


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Code format for the content widget



Three formats are available: JavaScript, HTML, or PHP. Please pick the format that best matches your website.

Press GENERATE CODE button. And you will receive a code snippet of your content widget. Now you need to copy and paste it into your webpage template.




How to edit and manage code snippets.


You can find all generated content widgets in the FEEDS - Content Widgets section.

See our separate user guide on how to manage your content widgets.


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