Santa’s Christmas Countdown Widget for WordPress

Download Version 2.0

We are super happy to announce the release of our first WordPress plugin, Santa’s Christmas Countdown Widget. Let the Countdown to Christmas begin! Download the plugin to add a cute Santa Claus inspired Countdown to Christmas in the sidebar of your blog. Santa’s countdown never needs updated! Santa starts his countdown again on Christmas day, every year.

Installation and Screenshots

1. Upload plugin and install. You can install through your WordPress admin panel.
2. On the plugins panel activate the Christmas Countdown Widget.
3. In the widgets menu drag the Christmas Countdown Widget to your sidebar.
4. The Christmas Countdown Widget displays a cute Santa countdown in your sidebar!

Thinking about making your own WordPress plugin? Visit Pippins Plugins for THE best how to tutorial series ever. Then check out this tutorial on how to publish to the WordPress repository.

Special thanks… to Tim from over at Customs of Christmas for the use of his awesome countdown script in the original version of this widget.

Love the plugin? I would love to hear from you in the comments…

Comments (10)

1. 

   Reply by Jinglebelle on October 9, 2012

   Awesome! Thank you *SO* much for today’s donation… you know who you are! It really made my day =D

2. 

   Reply by Paul Borje on October 16, 2012

   Would not it be nice…. if you could change the text to another language?

   Examples of Swedish called the “dagar till julafton”.
   Note – we do not expect to Christmas Day, but the day before.
   Santa Claus will be in the evening at around 6-7 pm

   • 

     Reply by Jinglebelle on October 16, 2012

     Hi Paul, thanks for stopping by. You can feel free to edit the plugin’s countdown date and language output.

     Go to Plugins > editor > santas-christmas-countdown/xmascount.php

     find this line:
     document.write(\"\" + daysLeft + \" days
til Christmas!\");

     change to:
     document.write(\"\" + daysLeft + \" dagar
till julafton!\");

     Locate the two instances of:
     BigDay = new Date(\"December 25, \"+thisyr);

     and change to:
     BigDay = new Date(\"December 24, \"+thisyr);

     I hope this helps!

3. 

   Reply by Eugene on November 13, 2012

   Hey there

   Great plugin!

   A quick question. When I leave the title blank the title bar still shows with no entry. Is there some way around this or is this a theme issue. Other plugins on the theme don’t show the ‘blank’ title.

   Any advice would be appreciated.

   • 

     Reply by Jinglebelle on November 14, 2012

     Hi Eugene,

     I’ve had the same issue in a theme I am developing, but I use the plugin on other themes, and the title bar doesn’t show.
     Anyhoo, you can remove the following lines from xmascount.php, and the title bar shouldn’t show up in your theme =D

     Go to Plugins > editor > santas-christmas-countdown/xmascount.php

     echo $before_widget;
$title = empty($instance['title']) ? ' ' : apply_filters('widget_title', $instance['title']);
if (!empty($title))
echo $before_title . $title . $after_title;;

     It should remove the title bar completely.

     Hope this helps…

4. 

   Reply by Nicolas on December 21, 2012

   Hi. Merry Christmas. I think there is a problem with the plugin.
   I am using WordPress 3.5 and latest Chrome browser and I can’t see the second line of the widget. In Internet Explore is O.K.

   example:
   4 days til
   Christmas

   “Christmas” isn’t show in Chrome.

   Thanks for your time.

   • 

     Reply by Jinglebelle on December 21, 2012

     Hi Nicolas,
     Merry Christmas to you, too!

     I’m using the plugin on several sites and have checked and re-checked, I can find no conflicts with the plugin and chrome, or the plugin and WordPress 3.5.

     Have you edited the plugin in any way? I ask because in your example you say:

     “4 days til
     Christmas”

     But it should show as

     “4 days
     til Christmas”

     It seems like there is a missing line break, and perhaps the “Christmas” is just out of view. If you could leave me a link to your site, I would be happy to take a look for you.

     Thanks =D

5. 

   Reply by Jinglebelle on December 28, 2012

   Thank you for today’s donation!! I really appreciate it!