The Daily Dilbert

This plug-in adds a Daily Dilbert Comic widget to the Sidebar Arrangement page, which can be added in the normal fashion. Just drag-n-drop the widget into the sidebar to add it to your blog.

Click on the options button to add a custom title.

In order to get this puppy to work follow the steps described here:

1. Uncompress the downloaded archive in [WordPress install root]/wp-content/plugins.
2. Activate the plugin in your WordPress plugins control panel. The plugin should show up as ‘grf-Dilbert’ in the list of inactive plugins. Just click the ‘Activate’-link on the right.
3. Go to the “Appearance” section, and select the “Widgets”-subsection.
4. Add the “The Daily Dilbert”-widget to the sidebar. Do this by clicking on ‘Add’-link behind the item named ‘The Daily Dilbert’.
5. Position the widget within the sidebar. You can simply do this by dragging the ‘The Daily Dilbert’-entry on the right side of the panel and and dropping it between the other widgets where you want to have it positioned.
6. If desired, enter a custom widget title by selecting the “Configure”-button and changing the title.
7. Click on the “Save Changes”-button on the page.
8. Edit your styles.css of your active template to tweak the presentation.

Did you make the flash-thing?

No, the flash object was made available by United Feature Syndicate. I just made the WordPress implementation. Silly UFS forgot all about WordPress.

The flash object can be found on http://widget.dilbert.com/

The flash object comes with its own Terms of Use.
The license of UFS is included in the plug-in source.

How do I modify the style of the widget in the sidebar?

Like any widget in your sidebar you can modify presentation by using the ID “dilbert”. Modify the style.css in your active template:

li#dilbert { /* your css directives here, eg: “text-align: center;” */ }

How come in step 2 ‘grf-dilbert’ is already in the activated plugins?

Because you were doing an upgrade and forgot to disable the plugin before you did so, you naughty boy/girl.

This plugin is cool, can you make something similar for …?

If you have requests feel free to mail them to me (contact me through my blog: http://www.greftek.net/blog).

Please do take into account that a comic needs to have some sort of feed in order to make such a plugin. It can be done without a feed (with scraping), but such a technique is high maintenance and prone to breaking. Aside from that not every artist appreciates such methods, so I don’t make them.

1.0
– Initial release

1.0.1
– Tested and tweaked for WordPress 2.5

1.0.2
– Tested for WordPress 2.7.x and adjusted installation instructions for new admin interface (thank you for pointing this out ;))