If you are familiar enough with WordPress, you should know that they are ever emerging, introducing new features and having new cool stuffs every now and then.

WordPress 2.7 is a big leap from previous version, with a revamped administration panel altogether. One cool thing that’s impressive is about the widgets on admin dashboard.

This is a rather great news for plugin developers, as it allows plugins to have more exposure to the user, at the same time allowing the user the flexibility to deactivate dashboard widgets. What’s more, it can be drag-and-dropped for widget rearrangement!

Registering your widget onto dashboard is easy.

// Your Dashboard Widget Content
function dashboard_widget_hello_world() {
echo ‘Hello World ’;
}

// Add Dashboard Widget using wp_add_dashboard_widget() function
function dashboard_widget_hello_world_setup() {
wp_add_dashboard_widget( ‘dashboard_widget_hello_world’, __( ‘Hello World’ ), ‘dashboard_widget_hello_world’ );
}

// Register Dashboard Widget to WordPress
add_action(‘wp_dashboard_setup’, ‘dashboard_widget_hello_world_setup’);

The above code basically registers a dashboard widget called “Hello World” which contains “Hello World ” in the widget.

This feature is powerful, as in you may connect to database to retrieve any relevant data, or makes use of WordPress shortcodes to call functions. It is up to your imagination on how far you want to go!

For more information, as usual, please refer to WordPress Codex here

Have fun!