How To Make Your Own WordPress Widget

In this article, I’m going to show you how to write a simple plugin that adds a new widget to WordPress. We’ll be using the new WP_Widget class, which is the newest method but means that the widget will only work in WordPress 2.8+. I know that 2.8 isn’t actually out yet, but it will be soon and there’s no sense in learning the old method.

The widget we’ll be creating will display upcoming posts (scheduled posts). A lot of sites schedule posts to automatically publish at a specific time, helping them keep a steady flow of articles. I know that I use this trick on Web Developer News and Attackr, and I’ll use it on this site as soon as I get some more articles written. Since the articles are already there and ready to be posted, why not tease them and give your readers something to look forward to? That’s exactly what this widget will do.

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