A Wordpress Login Widget – Sidebar Login Widget

August 11, 2007 | Published in: Wordpress & plugins | Tags: , , , , , 120

This plugin has now been replaced by an updated version which you can find here

Sidebar Login WidgetWant to allow users to log into wordpress from the sidebar? Doing so is not as simple as it sounds, so to ease your stress I have created a widget to handle everything.

It lets users login, and then redirects them back to the page they logged in from rather than the backend, it also shows error messages. Read more for more information and the download link.

Sidebar Login Widget v1.5 Build 20070122

By Mike Jolley ( http://www.blue-anvil.com )

What is it?

It’s a widget that allows users to login to wordpress from the sidebar! It uses php sessions to cleverly retrieve the wordpress login error messages, and uses redirects to send the user back to the site, rather than the wordpress backend.

Screenshots

User not logged in:

Not logged in screenshot.gif

User logged in:

Logged in screenshot.gif

Errors!

Error! Screenshot.gif

Get it now!

Download Sidebar Login Widget Version 1.55

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Installation Instructions

Simply:

  1. Unzip and upload the php file to your wordpress plugin directory
  2. Activate the plugin
  3. Goto the presentation > widgets tab
  4. Drag the widget into a sidebar and save!

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License

Wordpress Sidebar Login Widget © Copyright 2007-current.
Mike Jolley


This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin St, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301 USA

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Support my sweat, blood and tears

I know, that sounds gross, but we really did put ALOT of effort into this widget. If you like this widget please make a donation via paypal! Any amounts are welcome, your support is much appreciated.


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Found this post useful? Why not buy me a coffee!

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120 Responses to “A Wordpress Login Widget – Sidebar Login Widget”

RSS feed for comments on this post.

1 2 3 4 5

  1. Mike Jolley says:

    UPDATED!

    Comment made on December 8, 2007 at 2:10 am

  2. UPNSer says:

    I have the exact same problem as clevermonkey. Is there any solution to this yet? I’m running WP 2.3.1

    Comment made on December 13, 2007 at 6:26 am

  3. Starchild says:

    Hi,

    This is a really cool plugin, Ive been looking for something like this but I am having a strange problem, it all works ok, and looks fine when Im logged in etc, but when Logged out all the links are there but theres no input fields for username and password showing up.. I just cant figure out why.

    you can see what I mean here. http://www.starchildspoetry.com

    Thanks

    Star..

    Comment made on December 13, 2007 at 4:11 pm

  4. Mike Jolley says:

    @starchild – Because your css has labels hidden, and the form is inside the label..

    #leftside label, #extras label {style.css (line 49)
   display:none;
}

    Comment made on December 13, 2007 at 4:19 pm

  5. Starchild says:

    Hey Thanks Mike.. That worked!.

    It’s funny how it’s always the most obvious things you tend to overlook until someone points it out to you..Thanks Mike, and thanks for creating this wonderful plugin

    Star

    Comment made on December 13, 2007 at 4:49 pm

  6. Starchild says:

    Yeah, I just tested it and it seems to be working great Mike, the only other thing now is for some reason its seeing the form as maybe three seperate blocks so its underlining each block with a dotted bar like it does for each of my widgets etc, and also Im trying to find what I need to add to my css to affect the background,colours etc of the form.

    Ive tried .form, and #form but they didint seem to do anything.

    Thanks!..

    Star

    Comment made on December 13, 2007 at 5:22 pm

  7. Mike Jolley says:

    Get firebug for firefox, then you can easily see what css is affecting it, and make the changes :) https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1843

    Comment made on December 13, 2007 at 6:20 pm

  8. Starchild says:

    Thanks Mike, I’ve never heard of that. I will look it up now, I do try an find my own answers and work everything out myself first, its a good way to learn too, but sometimes just I just get lost.

    I will go an get that bug now.

    Thanks

    S

    Comment made on December 13, 2007 at 8:58 pm

  9. CnX says:

    Hi! I just wanted to say that the bug on WP 2.3 isn’t already fixed…i still get that problem with the cookies…

    Comment made on December 23, 2007 at 5:27 pm

  10. pang says:

    Hi how can i make the login script redirect to the backend?
    pls reply to my email.

    thanks

    Comment made on December 24, 2007 at 7:06 am

  11. Jerome says:

    it works except a strange issue with cookie, when you launch a new IE window and try to login the first time, it will said your browser’s cookie is disabled, but the second time will be ok, log in and everything is fine. could you repro it and find a way to fix it? thanks a lot!

    Comment made on December 30, 2007 at 12:49 am

  12. Grace says:

    What if the theme is not widget supported? What should I put on my sidebar.php?

    Comment made on January 6, 2008 at 1:24 pm

  13. Howdy says:

    The widget doesn’t allows users to logout to the main site where they login, instead to wordpress backend. i’m using WP 2.3. do you have any advise? Thanks.

    Comment made on January 6, 2008 at 4:20 pm

  14. Michel says:

    Hello ! These notes about this login plugin and his implementation with WP232:
    Don’t work well in the default theme just after the first starting of the browser (firefox, safari, camino, IE6,…) even on remote server or a local server (MAMP).
    —–
    [19-Jan-2008 09:18:57] PHP Warning: Cannot modify header information – headers already sent by (output started at /Applications/MAMP/htdocs/wp232mims/wp-login.php:34) in /Applications/MAMP/htdocs/wp232mims/wp-includes/pluggable.php on line 391
    —–
    The hook (add_action(‘wp_authenticate’,…)), relaunching “setcookie” is not good according the previous message of the server php log.
    Some time, the browser give a white screen, sometime not…
    —-
    The plugin work if a previous logout was done.
    —-
    Second note the redirect_to forget the SERVER_PORT !

    Hope to have time to do more investigations on WP232 to find the right place to send the cookie at the right time as it work in login.php…

    Best regards
    Michel

    Comment made on January 19, 2008 at 9:39 am

  15. Michel says:

    As expected in the previous message, it is now possible to confirm that the hook “add_action(‘wp_authenticate’, ‘widget_sidebarLogin_start’);” cannot be done with “wp_authenticate” because the header was sent before… (see wp-login.php : do_action is in middle of code).
    The successful tests show that this hook must me done with “add_action(‘template_redirect’,…. because with this powerful hook ‘template_redirect’ the header was not sent.. Now, the sidebarlogin can be used i.e. in a home page or every where…
    Soon, I will give an URL of a post with more explanations !

    Comment made on January 19, 2008 at 11:01 pm

  16. Jon says:

    I am a huge fan of this widget and would love to continue using it on my site. However the cookie flaw is creating a problem for my users. If I could be included in an e-mail when this is fixed it would be greatly appreciated. Wonderful work I look forward to the fix.

    Comment made on January 20, 2008 at 3:36 pm

  17. Michel says:

    Hi Mike Jolley and developer’s team :

    As announced in previous comments, please find the link of a post about the hook that I used successfully to patch the cookies problems with WP 2.3.3… (see third example)

    http://dev.xiligroup.com/?p=27

    The next step : be sure to limit the cookie’s calls because the login div is present everywhere with this widget…

    Best regards

    Comment made on January 21, 2008 at 5:53 pm

  18. tonup says:

    logs you in + stays on page +login still appears active under meta links
    clicking on this gets me to dashboard all good.
    the bad so far..
    conflicts with star rating {can’t vote)

    other wise nice update
    tonup

    Comment made on January 22, 2008 at 3:07 pm

  19. tonup says:

    update refreshing browser fixed it using firefox and wp 2.3.2

    Comment made on January 22, 2008 at 3:13 pm

  20. tonup says:

    updATE 2 pipex B******S Messing with their servers could be prob
    get back to you
    Thanks 4 cool plugin

    Comment made on January 22, 2008 at 3:22 pm

  21. tonup says:

    me again ..works well except you need browser refresh
    (to reload ACTUAL settings on page) could just be with firefox

    BIG Probs with Intersh*t explorer keep getting login error on sidebar
    but normal wordpress login works
    V sad that not enough people use ff of safari or similar intead of ms ie

    Comment made on January 22, 2008 at 3:40 pm

  22. Mike Jolley says:

    Its working for me, are you sure your not just using wrong password? login page and sidebar have same login code…?

    Comment made on January 22, 2008 at 5:59 pm

  23. tonup says:

    Carefully entered admin and exact password got this..
    Login
    ERROR: WordPress requires Cookies but your browser does not support them or they are blocked.
    2nd attempt
    same result
    curius about plugin as it was just uploaded over old version ..went in deactivated then re-activeted
    tried sidebar although esentially it works .. its back to refresh problem
    as in logged in but page has to be manually refreshed to use functions like star rating
    conclusion it’s something in my FF settings although cookies are all allowed must be something else in ff .. Investigating will post results ..thanks 4 any help

    Comment made on January 22, 2008 at 6:41 pm

  24. Mike Jolley says:

    Maybe its the script for redirecting, Im using the wordpress built in version…Ill modify it to use my own redirect

    Comment made on January 22, 2008 at 7:56 pm

  25. Mike Jolley says:

    @tonup – put code in <code></code> tags

    Comment made on January 24, 2008 at 5:27 pm

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