January 10, 2023

c3 Random Quotes Plugin

A simple widget to display random quotes on your WordPress site.

IMPORTANT UPDATE NOTE: For all users who are currently using this plugin, after updating you should go to Appearance > Widgets and to the settings for c3 Random Quotes, and simply click on the Save button without changing a thing. This will insure your settings are properly saved and will display on your site correctly. Without doing this step your quotes will not display properly until you Save your settings.

c3 Random Quotes displays a random quote each time your site (or page that displays the sidebar in which this widget is assigned to) is loaded.
You create and maintain the list of quotes in a private page on your WordPress site.
Quotes can be anything including customer comments.
It’s easily installed, features a few settings to adjust the appearance to your site template, and can be used in a sidebar, header, or footer depending on how your WordPress template is laid out.

Hat tip to Scott Ball, creator of the Super Simple Random Quotes plugin, from which this was inspired.

Features:

Easy user management of quotes in a private WordPress page.
Provides a default quote to display until you can assemble your list of quotes.
Settings allow control over quote appearance.
Allows for the leading quotation mark to be normal text or to display an exaggerated quotation mark image.
Can be placed anywhere on a WordPress site depending on where a template allows.
Optionally you can have the quotes displayed in a post or on a page using the shortcode [c3rq]. You will still need to place the widget in a sidebar to be able to edit options for the widget. It can be a sidebar that is otherwise not viewed on your site.

Installation

Now requires PHP Version 7.3

Installing the Widget

Unzip the widget archive.
Upload the folder c3randomquotes to the /wp-content/plugins directory.
Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress.
Add the widget to a sidebar and adjust the settings to suit your site.
Create a new page (NOT a post) on your WordPress site named ‘Quotes For Widget’ (without the quote marks) and set the ‘Visibility’ to ‘Private’.
For a quick start open the file quotes.txt in the c3randomquotes folder, copy it’s contents and paste in to the ‘Quotes For Widget’ page.
Save the ‘Quotes For Widget’ page and enjoy.
You may also choose to have the random quotes displayed on just a single page rather than in a header or sidebar which displays on every page. To do this simply place the shortcode [c3rq] in your page or post where you desire the quotes to be displayed.

Settings

Select how you want the leading quotation mark to appear in ‘Leading quotation mark image’. None displays a normal leading quotation mark in the same font as the quote appears. Selecting a color displays the exaggerated leading quotation mark image.
‘Width of the widget’ allows for adjusting the width to suit your template, in pixels, formatted as 100px for example. Often simply entering 100% will work perfect however there may be a situation you want to restrict the width to avoid a background graphic.
Enter the ‘Font size’ to match your template, such as 10pt or 10px.
‘Quote font color’ and ‘Attribution font color’ are entered as hex numbers such as #af3f00.
Select the attribution prefix you desire.
Be sure to ‘Save’ your settings once you’re finished editing.

Editing Quotes

Each quote in the ‘Quotes For Widget’ page is made up of 3 elements; the text of the quote, a delimiter character, and who the quote is attributed to, or author.
Each quote must be a line (or paragraph) of text unto itself and not combined with other quotes.
The delimiter, or divider, between the quote and it’s attribution/author is the character ‘#’. Don’t change the delimiter or use the ‘#’ character in the text of a quote as this will break the widget.
Take care not to leave any blank lines at the very top or bottom of the ‘Quotes For Widget’ page which may result in breaking the widget.

Screenshots

The widget settings screen.
A quote displayed in a page header showing the white, leading quotation mark image.
A quote displayed in a page header showing the leading quotation mark as part of the quotation text.
A quote displayed in a sidebar showing the leading quotation mark as part of the quotation text.

FAQ

My template doesn’t allow for widgets in the header. How can I add this?

There are many good resources available online that discuss this very thing. Search for ‘WordPress add a template widget area’ to see several. Be warned this will require some code editing in your template files. If you’re not comfortable with this consider hiring a web designer to do this.

I need a different shade of _this color_ to match my web site. Is this possible?

It is if you have a graphics editing application that can edit PNG files, such as Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator. If you do simply follow these steps:
1. Download and install the font used (unless you want to use a different font) from here: Bard.ttf
2. Once you have the font installed, make a copy of the quote-white.png, and open in your application.
3. With the text edit tool, select the quotation mark and adjust the font color to what ever you prefer.
4. Save your the image, and upload to the images folder in the c3randomquotes folder in your WordPress plugins folder.
5. Go to the widget settings and select ‘white’ for the quotation mark image and Save your settings.

I installed the plugin and followed all of the instructions for creating the quotes page but I keep getting the same quote about cats by Abraham Lincoln.

The Abe Lincoln cats quote is the default that is displayed when the plugin isn’t finding your quotes page. There are 3 critical elements to the quotes page and if either of them are not exactly right the plugin will not find your quotes.
1. Make sure your quotes are in a PAGE and not a POST.
2. Make sure your page Visibility is set to PRIVATE
3. Make sure the title of your quotes page is exactly ‘Quotes For Widget’ (without the quotes) and there are no extra spaces at the end.
It’s been discovered some language translation plugins actually modify the page title by adding language tags at the beginning and end. Unfortunately if you use these plugins you will not have the option to disable this and the result is your quotes page will not be found by the plugin. I do have a work around for it that may or may not be added to future updates. Until then please contact me directly for the solution.

Changelog

1.3

Fixed depreciated create_function
Fixed widget settings not being saved in new version (submitted by Jacob D.)
Fixed style irregularities

1.2

Fixed incorrect variable named c3rq_author_pfx (submitted by Julian R.)
Added a shortcode option [c3rq]
Changed display styles to a combination of a stylesheet with only user settings as inline CSS for a cleaner output

1.1

Changed line splitting function to catch all possible variations on different operating systems
Optimized quote images
Added 4px margin between quote image and quotation
Eliminated space between quote mark and quotation
Changed to make attribution prefix selectable with an option for no prefix

1.0.1

Changed from PHP4 constructors to PHP5

1.0

Initial release