Magento1.9 Widgets – Fix Widget Not Showing on Frontend

magento-1.9widget-instancewidgets

I am trying to add widget instance from Magento Admin Panel for Categories pages left sidebar, Product pages right sidebar, Home Page main content. None of the widgets are appearing on frontend. Is it possible that Block Reference to not work for adding widgets in a theme? I selected the theme package and widget type is CMS Static Block.

I contacted the theme designer on his support forum. He said I can add widgets to the sidebar using Magento Backend interface. But the widgets are not showing up on frontend. No matter I add a Static Block, a Category link or anything else, it doesn't show up on frontend.

Best Answer

The issue has been resolved. It was a small misconfiguration. System > Configuration > Design > Themes > Default was set to theme name. Theme designer asked me to remove it and now can add widgets.

Related Solutions

Magento 1.9 – How to Move Widget Upwards in Backend

The problem is that Magento doesn't have widget container on top of left column. You can create such a container in two steps:

Create you widget block container in local.xml file:

<layout>
   <!-- category pages with layered navigation -->
   <catalog_category_layered>
        <update handle="custom_top_container" />
   </catalog_category_layered>
   <!-- category pages without layered navigation -->
   <catalog_category_default>
        <update handle="custom_top_container" />
   </catalog_category_default>
   <!-- custom block container on that page -->
   <custom_top_container>
        <reference name="left">
           <block name="left_top" type="core/text_list" before="-" translate="label">
                <label>Left Column Top</label>
           </block>
        <reference>
   </custom_top_container>
</layout>

In the following example catalog_category_default and catalog_category_layered are the handles for category pages and custom_top_container handle is included into these pages by update layout instruction. The new left_top block is a type of Mage_Core_Block_Text_List, that shows concatenated output of child blocks assigned to it, so it will be empty if no widget is added to it. Now when layout is ready to the widget configuration, check the next step.

Create widget.xml file in etc directory of your theme (if you wan't preserve this configuration from theme you are extending, then you need to copy it from that theme into yours). This widget.xml should contain additional information for Magento to know which widgets supports your newly created container:
```
<widgets>
    <[widget_id]>
        <supported_blocks>
            <left_column_top>
                <block_name>left_top</block_name>
            </left_column_top>
         </supported_blocks>
    </[widget_id]>
</widgets>
```
This configuration file lets Magento know which blocks can be used for retrieving of possible container in the admin panel.

Sow you can go in the admin panel and choose your Left Column Top container for widget layout update.

Magento – Adding Widget Instance into Theme via XML

Here an example of adding New Products widgets via catalog.xml (or any other file) layout:

<block
  type="catalog/product_widget_new" name="custom_widget_name"
  template="catalog/product/widget/new/column/new_default_list.phtml">
    <!-- populate widget by options -->
    <action method="setData"><name>products_count</name><value>3</value></action>
    <action method="setData"><name>cache_lifetime</name><value>3600</value></action>
</block>

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Magento 1.9 – How to Move Widget Upwards in Backend

Magento – Adding Widget Instance into Theme via XML

Related Topic