21 November 2008

Sources of widgets and ideas for Blogger blogs

Today I have added a widget to my blog that allows visitors to rate postings.
This is supposed to not only generate a rating for each post (if your visitors bother to do it) but also to eventually show a list of most highly rated posts in a block on the side.

I like playing around with widgets to see if they add information for me, or interactivity for those who drop in. Some I've installed and then discarded, particularly if they seemed to slow my blog down.

So I thought I'd tell you about some of the "how to" blogs that I watch/read as well as where some of the widgets I use come from. So far I haven't done anything that involves altering the code of my Blogger template.

Blogs I watch for ideas:
Blogging Basics 101.
Blogger Buster.
Blog to Great.

I find these more than enough as they usually grab their ideas from other sites.

The widgets
The rating widget is from Yellow Turnip.
I'm still in two minds about Snapshots (the widget that gives you a preview of linked sites).
The podiocast comes from Odiogo.
The Christmas countdown is from Widgetbox.
I think I got the code for the Recent Comments widget from Blogger Buster
They have a list of available widgets here and that's where I think I got the Search box code too.
My Free Counter up in the menu bar comes from Easy Counter.
I have Sitemeter installed on all of my blogs.
I also use ClustrMaps to graphically show where visitors come from, and Feedjit for similar functions but this displays as a list and you can watch it "live".
You can get my blog posts as a daily email digests through FeedMyInbox, and Feedburner provides both RSS and email subscription.

Here is a video about how to access even more gadgets/widgets through Blogger/Google.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I enjoy widgets - seeing them on blogs and on my own. I've been thinking of adding the Christmas Countdown one.

Thanks for all the links.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the great post!

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