For anyone interested, I just posted this article and ensuing form to automatically create dashboard widgets. It's a javascripted form that creates all the necessary plugin code from the input parameters. I've tested it myself and it's worked fine for including a Google Gadget, which I think has great potential. Anyway, it's at the following.

http://thehacked.com/wordpress-dashboard-widget-plugin-maker/

Enjoy,
DavidM

I've tried blending these snippets and those from Rick's follow up article (http://rick.jinlabs.com/2009/02/01/how-add-options-to-your-wordpress-27-dashboard-widgets/) with snippets from the default-widgets.php or dashboard.php or posts like (http://justintadlock.com/archives/2009/05/26/the-complete-guide-to-creating-widgets-in-wordpress-28) but can't seem to manage any output to my sidebar.

This should be possible yes? Any ideas?

I think this could be very interesting for providing easier-to-use widgets for the user client.

Thanks for sharing your expertise.

Best,
Owen

Thanks for a good article.

Do you know of a built in function to add a widget to the side dashboard? The wp_add_dashboard_widget function seems to only allow adding it to the 'normal' area.

I can add the fields directly to the $wp_meta_boxes array, but a built in function would be much more robust.

<?php
if (!function_exists('text_widget')) {

function text_widget() {

echo 'Text widget by ARCHIparmentier | wordpressdesigner';

}

function archi_setup() {
wp_add_dashboard_widget( 'text_widget' , 'text widget' , 'text_widget');
}

add_action('wp_dashboard_setup', 'archi_setup');
}

?>