New Folksy Shop Widget

by Doug February 24, 2014

written by Doug February 24, 2014

We’ve released the first iteration of the Folksy widget! This is available from the Shop Settings section of the seller’s dashboard. It’s labelled #1 on the accompanying screenshot.

This is a small piece of code that you can paste into your website or blog to display a few items from your Folksy shop.

On the widget admin page, there’s a drop-down menu (labelled #2 in the screenshot) from which you can select from a number of different widget styles, from item strips to grids. When you select a widget, the HTML snippet you need to render it is put in the text box beneath the drop-down menu (labelled #3). Simply copy the text from this box, and paste it into your webpage to include the widget.

There is also a preview of how the widget you have selected will appear beneath the the snippet HTML (labelled #4).

Pointers for some of the most popular blog platforms:

Blogger
Go to your Blogger dashboard and click on your blog title to go to its settings. Click ‘Layout’ on the left hand side of the page, then click ‘Add gadget’ in the area you want the gadget to appear and select ‘HTML/JavaScript’ from the list of options. Paste the text that you copied from Folksy into the text area and save.

Wordpress
It should be possible to embed the widget in your WordPress blog, as long as you are on wordpress.org and use the iframe plugin (go to Plugins > Add new > Search for “iFrame”). There are full instructions for that with the plugin. Unfortunately, it isn’t possible to get the widget working with wordpress.com. This is because wordpress.com explicitly and specifically disallow the types of HTML tags that make such widgets possible for security reasons. Wordpress.com users can use our blog badges or one of our new blog badges and banners instead.

Tumblr
Good news for Tumblr users is that it should just work by editing your theme and pasting the snippet code into the text area on the left hand side, or into the HTML.

You can also add the widget to your Facebook Business Page by installing an Static HTML/iFrame app such as Static_HTML_Plus (other Static HTML apps are available) and pasting in the widget code.

This is an experimental feature, that we’re putting out there to see how and if it is used, so here’s hoping that it’s useful to you all. Enjoy! :)

Doug.

Doug

Shop Talk : Jes Liberty from One Sugar Hill

38 comments

Elizabeth Marsden February 24, 2014 - 6:12 pm

Please can you explain to me what this is, is it something I can do to promote sales without getting involved with things like facebook in a way a old person who is not computer savy can understand.
Thanks
Eliz

Doug February 25, 2014 - 11:32 am

Hi, Elizabeth. The widget is for sellers who have their own websites or blogs. It is a small piece of code that they can put into a webpage to include a view of the items in their shops. It is, by being a feature for those sellers who have their own websites, something for the fairly tech-savvy, I guess. However, it is an experimental feature, and if it looks to be something that people adopt and use a great deal, we may be able to put more resources into making it easier to use in the future. Hope that helps.

Jane Cameron February 24, 2014 - 8:58 pm

Hi Doug. The widget is awesome, but is showing items of mine which are out of stock … can you look into this please. Jane.

Doug February 25, 2014 - 11:33 am

Hi, Jane — thanks very much for spotting and reporting that — it should be fixed, now.

Jane Cameron February 28, 2014 - 9:39 am

Thanks Doug!

http://www.janecameron.co.uk/shop.html

Hazel Rayfield February 25, 2014 - 8:21 am

Trying it out this morning on my blog : http://www.artinwax.co.uk/blog/folksy-art-in-wax-shop/

Stephanie Guy Fine Art February 25, 2014 - 3:09 pm

Looks great on Hazel’s blog. Can you give me a pointer as to how to implement it on blogspot? I’m quite techy so don’t need detailed instructions, I just can’t see where to look.

Stephanie Guy Fine Art February 25, 2014 - 3:15 pm

Works well on tumblr http://stephanieguyfineart.tumblr.com/

Sian February 26, 2014 - 9:42 am

It works really well with your Tumblr theme!

Sian February 26, 2014 - 9:38 am

Hi Stephanie. Go to your Blogger dashboard and click on your blog title to go to its settings. Click ‘Layout’ on the left hand side of the page, then click ‘Add gadget’ in the area you want the gadget to appear and select ‘HTML/JavaScript’ from the list of options. Paste the text that you copied from Folksy into the text area and save. Hope that helps (I’ve updated the post to include this info!).

Stephanie Guy Fine Art February 28, 2014 - 2:45 pm

Thanks that works a treat :) http://www.flowapowaart.com/

Heather February 25, 2014 - 8:54 pm

Oh this is splendid – thank you! :D

Stephanie Guy Fine Art February 28, 2014 - 3:14 pm

I *LOVE* this new widget, well done team!

I’ve added it to my facebook page now, using the Static HTML: iframe tabs.

This is how it looks on my page: https://www.facebook.com/StephanieGuyFineArt

And this is the app I used to install it: https://apps.facebook.com/static_html_plus/?fb_source=appcenter&fb_appcenter=1

Sian March 3, 2014 - 4:44 pm

Hi Stephanie

That’s great! And thanks for the info – we’ll add that into the blogpost.

Gillian W May 7, 2014 - 5:27 pm

Hi,saw your post.This was great advice and helped a lot,hopefully this will get me more customers or feedback etc.thanx

Gillian W May 7, 2014 - 5:29 pm

Hi stephanie,forgot to ask how did you change the welcome to shop or even a picture? it just says I need to upgrade to upload pics

Theresa Hing February 28, 2014 - 3:37 pm

I like the idea of this widget. Will have to start a blog to take advantage of it. Thank you

Wendy Thomas March 3, 2014 - 7:18 am

How and where would I put this on my website.
Would I open a new page for it?
Would it act as a promotional link from website to Folksy because that is what I would want it to do.

Sian March 3, 2014 - 4:43 pm

Hi Wendy

If you can add HTML to your website then yes, you can add it to your site! It’s up to you whether you want to put the widget on its own page, or incorporate it into an existing page. The widget would show items that are available for sale in your shop (the number of items would depend on how many rows and columns you select from the widget admin page) and the images would link through to your products on Folksy.

I hope that answers your question!

Silvana April 17, 2014 - 12:03 pm

Wendy asked WHERE you put the widget on her website. This instruction is often given but I’ve never understood exactly WHERE on my website the code goes – putting a code in is a simple instruction but doesn’t help when you’ve no idea where to start. Can you generalise or is it really up to everyone’s individual website setup?

mo leverton March 5, 2014 - 9:58 am

Weeee…it worked! Really easy to get up on my WordPress blog using text widget…looks really good:
http://hareroundtheneedle.co.uk

homepage March 13, 2014 - 8:14 am

Hi, all is going perfectly here and ofcourse every one is
sharing data, that’s in fact good, keep up writing.

Sharon Scott March 15, 2014 - 6:18 pm

Hi, I’ve managed to get the IFrame app on Facebook but wondered if you could tell me how to just get the lovely find me on Folksy button and not the pictures of products, Thanks very much.

Sian March 17, 2014 - 3:05 pm

Hi Sharon

I think you’re looking for the blog badges, which are here: http://blog.folksy.com/2011/12/07/folksy-blog-badges

I hope that helps!

Sharon Scott March 17, 2014 - 10:15 pm

That looks like what I’m after. Thanks for that.

Sharon.

Jessie's Needle March 22, 2014 - 8:11 am

Thank you for this great widget. I’ve added it to my blog this morning.

Marianne Mohandes March 23, 2014 - 8:58 am

Hi,
Does anyone know why the widget works on windows platforms on all the browsers, but not on iPad or iPhones?
I inserted this into my webpage and it looks really nice, but it does not appear on an iPad.
Is this something to do with the fact that iOS does not support Flash?
If yes, can we have a non flash version that works on all platforms??
Will appreciate any comments or feedback http://www.mariannemohandes.com

Marta Mitchell April 4, 2014 - 11:14 am

This is fantastic! The instructions were very easy to follow too, thanks!

Gabriella April 12, 2014 - 4:58 pm

It’s great only too wide for the column I have on blogger – I can narrow it but then that cuts off the bottom. Are there any plans to have just one item with the Folksy logo on that can be scaled to about 100-150px wide? That would be brilliant.

Angela Harpham April 17, 2014 - 4:54 pm

Is there a way to select specific items as some of my items are already on my website? If I can do that it is a great tool.

Ley Holloway April 18, 2014 - 12:14 am

Works beautifully on Blogspot, however when I paste into my website just shows as the original code not the widget, what’s worse is that when you click on the “shop” link in the code a box advertising sainsbury’s, asda etc pops up, I thought I’d just try loading the page page to see if that made any difference and that’s what I got. Not sure why, I’ve had this problem with code before, not sure if it’s me puting it in the wrong place or what, I pasted the code in where another, similar link had been, advertising a shop I no longer use.