WP Widget : Random Links

Wordpress I have a nice list of Widgets to share, and on top of that I am willing to create widgets on demand, since some people love to have something in a sidebox but seem to struggle to get this content there in a simple way, I thought it would be nice to create widgets you can control easily from the widget-panel inside the wp-admin. The first widget I’m going to share is the LinkLove Widget. It is similar to the build in links widget but this version is different as it will show an X amount of random links from your complete blogroll.First of all we have to edit the functions.php that can be found in your themes folder. open it and add this line:

<?php include (TEMPLATEPATH . '/widgets.php'); ?>

Now we have to create a file where we are going to store our custom widgets. name it widgets.php
good, open the file and enter the following code.

<?php
/**********************************************************
Widget for Wordpress 2.X By Sebastiano Bellinzis
http://sebastiano.ezion.cc
Please do not delete ..thank you!
***********************************************************/

// Main function that we will initialize later on.
function widget_linklove_register() {
	if ( function_exists("register_sidebar_widget") ) :

	// this function will draw the content (In this case the random links)
	function widget_linklove($args){
		extract($args);
		$options = get_option("widget_linklove");
		$buff ="";

		$buff.= $before_widget;
		$buff.= $before_title . $options["title"] . $after_title;
		$buff.= "<ul>";
		echo $buff;	

		get_links("-1", "<li>", "</li>", "", FALSE, "rand", FALSE, FALSE, $options["count"], TRUE);

		$buff= "</ul>";
		$buff.= $after_widget;
		echo $buff;
	}

	// This function will draw the tiny menu in the admin panel , we can edit NAME and COUNT(quantity of links)
	function widget_linklove_control() {
		$options = $newoptions = get_option("widget_linklove");

		if ( $_POST["linklove-submit"] ) {

			// set the title
			$newoptions["title"] = strip_tags(stripslashes($_POST["linklove-title"]));
			if ( empty($newoptions["title"]) ) $newoptions["title"] = "LinkLove";
			//quantity of links
			$newoptions["count"] = $_POST["linklove-count"];
			if ( is_int($newoptions["count"])  ) $newoptions["count"] = "10";
		}

		if ( $options != $newoptions ) {
				$options = $newoptions;
				update_option("widget_linklove", $options);
		}

		$title = htmlspecialchars($options["title"], ENT_QUOTES);
		$count = $options["count"];

		$buff=	 "<p>"
				."<label for=\"linklove-title\">"._e('Title:').""
				."<input style=\"width: 250px;\" id=\"linklove-title\" name=\"linklove-title\" type=\"text\" value=\"".$title."\" 

/></label></p>"

				."<p><label for=\"linklove-count\">"._e('How Many Links:').""
				."<input style=\"width: 50px;\" id=\"linklove-count\" name=\"linklove-count\" type=\"text\" value=\"".$count."\" 

/></label></p>"

				."<input type=\"hidden\" id=\"linklove-submit\" name=\"linklove-submit\" value=\"1\" />";

		echo $buff;
	}	

	// define the 2 functions from above (Wordpress needs to know what to use and where and how and why!)
	register_sidebar_widget("Linklove", "widget_linklove", null, "linklove");
	register_widget_control("Linklove", "widget_linklove_control", null, 75, "linklove");
	endif;
}

/**********************************************************
Keep the functions above this line

Keep main execution commands below this line
***********************************************************/

// Here we initialize the function from above. we add it to INIT so the function will be executed together with the main functions in WP.
add_action("init", "widget_linklove_register");
?>