I’m no big fan of Wodpress widgets really, although I can understand why Matt & Co. made the functionality available to the community. Not being so theme-savvy doesn’t matter that much anymore, at least if you picked a widget-ready theme.

Don’t know what I’m talking about? Then you probably don’t use Wordpress, or just don’t care how it works. Widgets are special kinds of plugins that you can drag n’ drop in the admin interface, place where you want and edit (somewhat) without knowing squat about hooks, template tags or PHP coding. Sweet, right?

Well, I certainly can be. A widget-ready theme and a couple of widgets could very well be the only thing that the common Wordpress user needs.

The Progress bar plugin, by Stine Schjerning, is a widget which means that you need the Widget plugin to get it running, as well as a widget-ready theme. I installed it on my test blog, tried to break it but failed. That’s a good sign, the widget works like a charm and you can add a whole bunch of progress bars via the normal widget interface. Nothing weird or fancy here, just write a title for your progress bar, give it a percentage value (no other options here) and a link if you want. Save and all done.

The Progress bar plugin does exactly what it claims. Some options for colors on a progress bar basis would be nice, and perhaps you might want to list your progress in something else than percentage, but that’s really it. If you’re running a widget-ready theme and need a simple progress bar this is the plugin for you. Nothing more, nothing less.