Widgets are lightweight, reusable user interface (UI) elements. Within Telligent's platform widgets are used for all UI, whether a menu or a forums list. Related widgets are combined to create applications. For example, the forums application in the is a series of widgets that act in unison to provide a forums experience.
The great part about widgets is that from a user experience point of view you can dial-up or dial-down the functionality by adding or removing widgets. Furthermore, the platform enables you to control properties on widgets as well as drag-and-drop placement.
View a list of factory default widgets by release where you can click through to a definition for each widget.
For each theme's pages, we've provided a default layout of widgets throughout the site, but you can move, rename, remove, add and/or customize each widget within each page. And you can control which widgets are available on each of the four main sections of your community:
- Dashboard - Home page for all community members (by default customizable by each individual community member)
- Group pages - Home page and all application pages within the group except for blogs (by default customizable by the group owner(s))
- Blog pages - All blog application pages (by default customizable by the blog author and group owner(s))
- Site pages - All other pages throughout your community including log in/out, error pages, etc. (customizable only by the administrator)
This fine-grained access control is determined through permissions assigned to community members (Registered Users role), group owners, and blog authors.
Some widgets are designed to be used only on very specific pages and, when used on pages they are not designed for, may cause your page not to display correctly. As an administrator, you can always fix this problem by switching into Edit Mode by including the Page-EditMode=True query string parameter on the URL for the page (e.g., http://localhost/CS/publicopen1/subpublicopena/b/create.aspx?Page-EditMode=True).
All of the widgets that are included with Telligent Evolution are customizable with properties for item sorting; title personalization (using group, application, user, or resource information), and border/padding appearance properties. Each type of widget also has additional configurable properties (for example, blog lists, forum thread details, or activity messages).
If you want to customize the particular behavior of the UI it is recommended that you create a new widget vs. modifying an existing widget. This helps ensure that the application is upgrade-safe. In the Developer Documentation you can learn more about building custom widgets to provide the exact functionality your community needs.
Related information
Introduction to widgets