***THIS DOCUMENT IS OUT OF DATE*** ================================== How to add a new sidebar plugin =============================== 1. Decide on a name. I'll refer to it as below. 2. Next, create the plugin's controller in components/plugins/sidebars/_controller.rb. Look at flickr_controller.rb for an example. At a minimum, you need to define two methods: * self.display_name. This is the short name that shows up in title blocks in the sidebar admin UI. * self.description. This is the description that shows up in the UI. If your plugin needs to save configuration options, then you'll need to add a 'configure' method as well, and possible a self.default_config method. Follow the examples. 3. Next, create the configuration page. If your sidebar plugin doesn't need any configuration data, then you can skip this step. Otherwise create a file called components/plugins/sidebars//configure.rhtml and put the form for configuring your plugin into the file. See the existing examples for inspiration. You'll need to include observe_form to get rails to save your data for you. 4. Finally, create the plugin's content. This is what is displayed when the sidebar is displayed in the blog. Create a file called components/plugins/sidebars//content.rhtml and fill it up. Don't forget to include a

header block. Configuration data (if any) is available in @sb_config[] That's it. New components should be picked up automatically. To enable them, you'll need to use the sidebar tool in the admin page.