IFrameWidgets is a WordPress plugin that allows you to place widgets in an I-Frame, so they won’t stop the rest of the page from loading if the content loads slowly or hangs. For those of you that have an entire sidebar full of social widgets, this is the Plugin for you!
If you look at the left sidebar of my site, see all those rectangular image buttons like RSS, Twitter and Stumble? All of the images are loaded together in one I-frame. This way they all appear at once rather than fill in the page gradually. It allows you people to click my Entrecard and run in record time. Sometimes before my icons even load. The page doesn’t actually load faster, it simply displays faster.
Before using this widget I had to to create I-frames the old fashioned way. Make a static html page, upload it to the server, then add lines of code to my template. Now I just upload one plugin and activate it. The plugin supports up to eleven I-frame widgets that work exactly like a text box widget does. Add a box to your sidebar, paste in your social widget code, then save!
Now remember, some page elements like Entrecard and AdSense already come as an I-frame. So do certain ads like those from Amazon. If you see the ad code starting with “iframe src=” then you don’t need to put that code into this widget. BUMPzee, MyBlogLog, Blogrush, and BlogCatalog widgets will all benefit from this plugin.
IFrameWidgets Version 1.01 only works on WordPress 2.5 and above. For previous versions of WordPress use IFrameWidgets 1.0.
How about if I don’t use widgets?
Can I use it?
BaseGaurdian: If you are referring to sidebar widgets, then Yes, but only for the BUMPzee widget. For some reason you can place a special line of PHP code into your template for that social network only.
If you are referring to things other than social networks, then yes, you can put any html code inside the wordpress widget you want opened inside an i-frame.
Either way you still have to be running a version of WordPress. If not, just make an I-frame the old fashioned way.
I see, thanks.
As much as I dislike iframes, that’s actually a pretty neat idea.
Now all that people need to do is get rid of the 50 plugins and widgets they have. Find out what is really necessary for your blog. (Not talking about this one, but many other blogs)
Anytime you want something to load outside the time limit of the main page, i-frames are the way to go. Having a blog hang before the person can read the content sucks, regardless of whether its an image, a video, social widget, or whatever.
Wow, that’s a really handy tool. I always stop by here from entrecard because I remember that the turnip mean quick loading. That may sound cheesy to you, but it’s actually true. I remember which blogs load fast and which just crawl. With Comcast doing their bandwidth drop testing over the last two weeks (which the FCC told them no, but they did it anyway), it really helps to have quick loading websites because the internet’s been TERRIBLE!
Thanks for the quick load!
Great blog, I’ve searched the internet for new and exciting social networking sites, and have found Casuals Online to be one of the most interesting sites around, they offer 3d chats.
I also would recommend this online free tool: http://Site-Perf.com/
It measure loading speed of page and it’s requisites (images/js/css) like browsers do and shows nice detailed chart – so you can easily spot bottlenecks.
Also very useful thing is that this tool is able to verify network quality of your server (packet loss level and ping delays).