Adding widgets

OK, so now you've got BuddyPress set up, your theme installed, and things are looking good. Well done!

But you'll remember that earlier, in this chapter, we looked at the design of your site and the interface you want to give your users.

You've already done something toward helping people use your site by adding BuddyPress screens to your navigation menu, but you can do more. On a social site, it's helpful to have some content that users can see wherever they are on the site, such as the latest activity, a list of the groups they're in, and maybe, some help text.

To display content like this on every page, you can use widgets in your theme's sidebar and footer.

Let's start by taking a look at the widgets available to us.

Widgets provided by BuddyPress

To see the widgets that come bundled with BuddyPress, go to Appearance | Widgets to see the Widgets admin screen:

Fig 2.13: Widgets bundled with BuddyPress

The widgets you get are as follows:

• (BuddyPress) Friends: This is a list of the...