WordPress Widgets - questions and suggestions

[Simon]

Hiya

I'm working on a couple of new blogs and I downloaded and installed the latest version of WordPress (2.2.3) and now I'm looking at the new Widget features that are built into this version (meaning the WordPress Widgets plugin which I've never used before isn't needed now).

The first thing I noticed is that Widgets seem to be an 'either-or' approach to managing sidebar content. What I mean is that from what I can tell so far, if you activate even one Widget in a sidebar, then that sidebar gets completely taken over by the "dynamic_sidebar" function and the only things that show up in that sidebar are whatever Widgets you want to add there. (If I'm wrong about this, please let me know.)

So my questions at this point are:

• Is it worth using Widgets if you lose the ability to add anything but Widget content in the sidebar?
• Are there easy ways I don't know about to add non-Widget content to the sidebars if you're using Widgets in that same sidebar?
• If it is worth using Widgets, then does anyone have some suggestions for good Widgets that you think are worth using?

Thanks for any input you can offer.




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