Widgets

Widgets are small blocks you add around your pages: a search form in the sidebar, social media buttons in the footer, an image banner, a list of your pages or a box of your own HTML. You choose which widgets to use, where they go and in what order, without touching any code.

Where widgets can go

Widgets live in areas. Which areas you have depends on your theme:

Area	Where it shows in Nova
Sidebar	Next to the listings on category and search pages, and on the blog, FAQ, contact page, forum and member profiles. Not on the home page or on a listing’s own page.
Footer	At the top of the footer, on every page.
Post a listing	Next to the form members use to post a listing.
Inactive	Nowhere. Widgets here keep their settings, ready to bring back later.

Some older themes also have a Header area, above the content on every page. The sidebar position (left, right or none) is set in Theme options.

In Nova, sidebar widgets replace the built-in filters on category pages. If you want visitors to keep filtering by price, location and custom fields, either leave the sidebar empty or add a Search widget with Advanced option and Custom fields in search set to TRUE.

Add a widget

1. In the admin panel, go to Design › Widgets.
2. In Add a widget on the right, find the widget (the search box helps) and click + Add.
3. In Where do you want the widget displayed?, choose the area: sidebar, footer, publish_new (next to the post-a-listing form) or inactive.
4. Fill in the widget’s settings. Most have a title; leave it empty for no title.
5. Click Add widget.

You can add the same widget more than once, for example a Text widget in the sidebar and another in the footer.

Move, edit or remove a widget

• Reorder or move: drag a widget by its handle to a new position or into another area. The change is saved as soon as you drop it.
• Edit: click Edit, change the settings and click Save.
• Hide for now: drag it to Inactive, or edit it and choose inactive. Its settings are kept.
• Delete: click Edit, then Delete and confirm. The widget and its settings are gone.

The widgets

Listings and navigation

Ads — a list of listings. Type ads to display: Latest Ads, Popular Ads last month or Featured Ads; Number of ads to display (1–50); Ads title displayed.

Featured Ads — your featured listings, with Featured title displayed and Number of featured ads to display. Shows nothing while no listing is featured.

Categories — links to your categories. On a category page it lists that category’s subcategories, so visitors can drill down. Setting: Categories title displayed.

Locations — the same for locations, keeping the category the visitor is in. Setting: Locations title displayed.

Search — a search form that sends visitors to the search page. Settings:

Setting	What it does
Title displayed	The heading above the form.
Advanced option	TRUE adds category, location and price fields to the keyword box.
Custom fields in search	TRUE adds your searchable custom fields.

Recently searched — the visitor’s own latest searches, as links. Setting: Number of searches to display.

User Location — the location the visitor has picked, with a Change Location link. Only shows once a visitor has chosen a location, for example with auto-locate.

User Search — a search form for member profiles, with Custom fields in search for your user custom fields.

Map — a Google map of listings, following the category and location the visitor is browsing. Settings: Map height in pixels and Zoom in the map. It needs the Google Maps integration set up, and only listings with an address Google can find appear on it. An empty map almost always means your listings have no recognisable address yet.

Interactive Map — the clickable region map you set up in Interactive map.

Content

Text — any text or HTML: an announcement, opening hours, an embedded form, an ad code. Settings: Text title displayed and HTML/text content here. The HTML is used exactly as you type it, so paste code only from sources you trust.

Image — a picture or banner that resizes to fit the area. Settings:

Setting	What it does
Title displayed	Optional heading above the image.
Enter the image URL	The full address of the image, starting with https://.
URL to redirect when clicked (Optional)	Where a click on the image goes. Leave empty for an image that isn’t a link.

The image must already be online. Any image you have inserted in a page or an email is listed under Media › Image library, where Copy URL gives you its address.

Pages — links to all your published pages. Setting: Page title displayed.

Links — your own list of links. Put one link per line as address|name, for example https://www.example.com|Our shop, and choose the Target (New tab or window or Parent frame, which opens in the same tab).

Blog posts — your latest blog posts. Settings: Blog posts limit, if none display all and Widget title displayed.

Forum Topics — the latest forum topics, with Forum Limit, if none display all.

RSS — headlines from any RSS feed. Settings: RSS url address, Number of items to display, How often we refresh the RSS, in seconds and RSS title displayed.

Stats — your site’s totals: views, listings and users.

Social

Share — buttons to share the page on social networks. Leave Social media to display empty to show them all, or list the ones you want, separated by commas, using these words: whatsapp, facebook, tweet, linkedin, pinterest, vkontakte, odnoklassniki, tumblr, reddit, stumbleupon, digg, flipboard, email, print. The WhatsApp button only appears on phones.

Follow — icons linking to your own profiles. Fill in the networks you use: Facebook URL, Twitter URL, Instagram URL, Pinterest URL, Linkedin URL, Youtube URL, Flickr URL, Telegram URL (a Google+ URL field is still there; leave it empty).

In Nova you can also put Facebook, X (Twitter) and Instagram icons in the footer without a widget, in Theme options.

Subscribe — lets visitors sign up for an email whenever a new listing matches what they’re looking for. Settings:

Setting	What it does
Categories / Locations	TRUE lets visitors pick the categories or location they care about.
Price	TRUE adds a price range slider.
Minimum Price, Maximum Price, Increment Step	The range and steps of that slider (0 to 1000 in steps of 100 by default).
Subscribe title displayed	The heading.

Visitors who aren’t signed in enter their email address, and an account is created for it. When a new listing is published in a matching category, location and price range, they get an email about it. Subscribers are listed under Subscribers in the admin panel. Make sure your email settings work.

Languages — a menu of languages for multilingual sites. Leave Languages to display coma separated empty to list all of them, or enter language codes such as en_US,es_ES,fr_FR. Nova already has a language menu in its footer when your site is multilingual.

Chat — a public chat room for your visitors, using the free tlk.io service. Settings: Name of your chat room/channel and Chat height in PX. For private messages between buyers and sellers, use messaging instead.

Disqus — the latest comments from Disqus, with Number of comments to display. It needs Disqus set up first.

Widgets for a listing’s page

These widgets only show on a listing’s own page. Nova and Marketplace don’t have a sidebar on that page, so in those themes they don’t appear at all. They are for the older themes.

• Seller information — about the seller, with options to show a contact button (Show contact form), their description, their last login date, their location (Location on Map or Address) and their user custom fields.
• Contact — a form to message the seller.
• Currency Converter — lets visitors see the price in another currency. It needs a free or paid API key from fixer.io in Enter your API key. List the currencies with Currencies to display coma separated (three-letter codes such as EUR,USD,GBP, or the groups major, european, skandi, asian and american), and set Choose the default currency (e.g. USD) only if your prices aren’t in your site’s currency.
• Tools — buttons for the seller and admins: edit, deactivate, and pay to feature or bump the listing; admins also get spam and delete.

Nova’s listing page already has its own seller box and contact button.

Payments

Coupon — a box where members enter a coupon code. It only shows while you have coupons that can be used.

Tips

• Keep the sidebar short. Two or three useful widgets beat ten that push the listings down on phones.
• After switching theme, check Design › Widgets: areas the new theme doesn’t have aren’t shown, and their widgets don’t appear on the site.
• Widgets that depend on a feature (blog, forum, coupons, maps) show nothing until that feature is set up.

Related guides

• Theme options — sidebar position and Nova’s built-in filters.
• Banners and ad slots — Image and Text widgets for advertising.
• Menu and footer links — links in the top bar and the footer.
• Custom CSS — restyle a widget.