12 Important Blogger Widgets

A few of us at Widgetbox spent the weekend in Las Vegas at BlogWorld Expo (more to come on why!); and after interact with hundreds of bloggers, I thought it would be useful to showcase twelve of our best blog widgets – designed for bloggers and by bloggers!

12 Important Blogger Widgets

If you have a blog, these three widgets are necessary additions to your blog’s template. Each widget is customizable, showcases your content and drives traffic back to your blog!
The Blidget
Making a blidget is simple: enter your blog’s URL, customize and embed! Widgetbox has served over 1.5 billion blidgets:

The Blog Badge
Use your blog to build your brand and promote your content on other internet sites such as Digg, LinkedIn, Facebook, etc.

Widgetbox Blog Network: Channel Widgets
Widgetbox launched the Widgetbox Blog Network last week with 29 channels of blog categories. Pick your channel, add the widget to your blog template and your blog posts will be featured across other blogs in your channel.

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Content Additions
Surround your blog posts with other relevant, interesting content around the web:
Twitter Badge

Skype Me Button

RSS Feed Scroller

Digg Ticker

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Social Sharing
You spend time writing on your blog… use these widgets to submit your content to social websites that will share your blog with 1,000s of users:

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Must Have List Professional Blogger Widget

As the line between online and offline world blurs it’s important for each of us to have an online identity. This could be in any form, a Facebook profile, a busy Twitter account, a LinkedIn profile, a funky looking MySpace page or a simple WordPress Blog. This post will specifically talk about bloggers and how they can create a blog which reflects their personality online. 

Must Have List Professional Blogger Widget

The following badges, widgets or gadgets as you might call it will help you share more information with your readers without you writing about it.

Let’s start with the hottest in Town..
Twitter Badge: These are available in all shapes, sizes, colors, etc. There are so many variations of this badge that I am sure you will surely something you like. These badges show your latest Tweets on the blog
Official:

• http://twitter.com/badges/blogger

WP-Plugins:

• http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/twitter-for-wordpress/


• http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/twitter-tools/

Customized:

• http://www.bloggerbuster.com/2008/04/add-customized-twitter-widget-to- your.html

Flickr Badge: This badge shows all your publically available pictures on Flickr. Just signin to your account and configure this badge to get the code.
This is what the badge looks like..

www.flickr.com

This is a Flickr badge showing recent public items from Flickr. Make your own badge here.

Get your Flickr Widget from here…

Wakoopa Widget: This is not for the faint of hearts. Wakoopa tracks all activities on your computer and reports back to the site to update your profile of all the softwares that are being used on the computer. This list can be shared with your friends and contacts based on your preferences.  Click here to read more about Wakoopa.
This is what a Wakoopa badge looks like..

MyBlogLog: MyBlogLog maintains information about you and visitors on your blog. This information is then displayed in a attractive format which also encourages social traffic from blog to another.

Abbu

MyBlogLog profile »

Me

Neighborhood

Abbu

posted a blog entry

Dreamate Sleep Inducer Relaxes You To Sleep, Fights Insomnia

1 day ago

Abbu

posted a blog entry

RIM Announces Web-Kit Browser, Tries To Keep Pace With The Competition

1 day ago

Abbu

posted a blog entry

HTC Desire Announced – A Better Version of Google’s Nexus One!

1 day ago

Abbu

posted a blog entry

Adobe Flash Player for Mobile Announced – Demo’s on Nexus, Dell Mini 5 Tablet (Video)

1 day ago

Abbu

posted a blog entry

Samsung 3D TV C7000 Series Announced, Slated To Launch This March

1 day ago

More >>

ridha kh

posted a tweet

Flex 3 : Applications internet riches: Internet riches, hautement interactives et ergonomiques. Flex est basé sur ... http://bit.ly/bevDuV

7 days ago

ridha kh

posted a blog entry

Flex 3 : Applications internet riches

7 days ago

ridha kh

posted a tweet

UML 2: Le développement de sites web est souvent le royaume où règne la loi du « vite fait, mal fait ». Il est vra... http://bit.ly/dbUDQm

8 days ago

ridha kh

posted a blog entry

UML 2

8 days ago

ridha kh

posted a blog entry

SWING

9 days ago

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Provided by

SIGAMP Badge: SIGAMP shows the song you are currently listening to on your computer. This badge can be installed on any blog or site and the moment you start listening to music it starts sharing information on the badge. With the paid version of this service you can customize the widget according to your needs or even upload your own image.
Here is what the (free) badge looks like..

Google Latitude for Blogs: Google Latitude badge shows your current location to all your blog readers, not everyone is comfortable sharing such information.  Click here to read more about Google Latitude..

Here is what the badge will look like on your blog..

Click here to get your badge..

Google Talk for Blog: Connecting with your readers is one of the most important part of the personal blogging. Google Talk lets you connect with your readers without giving away any personal information such as your ID or any other information.

Once any of the users click on the following badge you will instantly receive an alert on your Gtalk client and you can start chatting.

Here is what the blog looks like..

Get your badge here..

Geekchart : This is a new one. Once you register with the service you can add the userID’s of services like, Twitter, Stumbleupon, Digg, Blog, etc.. and it generates a chart based on your last 30days activity on these services.

Here is what it typically looks like..

Syedabbas’s Geek Chart

Click here to get your own Geekchart!

Other Badges: (Leave a comment and let us know about a badge you’d like to see on the list, we’ll add it)

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/editbadge.php

FriendFeed: http://friendfeed.com/embed/widget

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Top 5 essential widgets blogger sidebar must have

Here is a ranking of the Top 5 essential widgets a blog's sidebar must have. Reactions and suggestions are all welcome on the comments area. If your suggestions give very strong points, this entry will be updated to include yours.

Top 5 essential widgets blogger sidebar must have

1. Recent Posts - This is self-explanatory. For Blogger blogs, a Recent Posts widget is very important. If you want to advertise every post you make and want the new ones noticed fast, then their titles must appear right away on the sidebar through this widget. However, due to the "newspaper style" capacity of Wordpress blogs, a Recent Posts widget is not that needed there. A newspaper style could allow up to 10+ previews of posts still with the scrollbar long enough. In Blogger blogs, 10+ posts in the homepage could make the scrollbar so tiny your readers would easily bounce away from your blog.

2. Subscription Link or Form - Make your readers loyal with this widget. If your posts are interesting and useful enough (or has a high quality for short), then readers would want to be updated on the latest from your blogs. A subscription via RSS, a reader or e-mail is a convenient way for a reader to receive updates from you. Seeing a Subscription Link or Form could possibly entice readers to give it a try, or maybe seriously subscribe to your posts.

3. Popular Posts - A great way to endorse the best posts that you made, those that made it to the top in the search engine results and those that made the most number of comments. Well obviously this is not just to take pride of your blog but to serve your new readers the best of the best so they would enjoy your blog and subscribe after. Many blogs forget this part.

4. Labels or Tags - Even the most-specific-niched blog posts could be broken up into several tags. This is how this widget is of use, clearly categorizing each tags into clear and proper groupings so users would find it easy to reach posts that they are finding with a specific topic (or label). This is to make sure that readers finding about Paris would not end up reading about Japan.

5. Pages or Links to Internal Pages - Usually, this is where links to the Contact Me, About and Blogroll reside. These are just links but they point to very important pages on a blog. The Contact Me is very important as it promotes an interaction between blogger and reader. About is one of the most important internal pages that a blogger must not forget. Sometimes a reader would directly search for that page even before taking a look at your posts. A Blogroll page is optional

IF YOU HAVE ANY ADDITION TO THIS LIST PLEASE LET ME KNOW

Tags: blogger tips, blogging tips,blogger widgets

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What is The Most Important Widget Pages for Blogger..?

Your webmaster search is: blogger widget must have Pages

1. About Page : Many a times, visitor (more than what you’ve written) would like to know about you especially when they like your posts. You need not go in details – Just a short biography about yourself is enough to be known by reader.

2. Form or way to contact : To contact you personally then let it be a request, query or something else; you should have a contact form on your blog. Wordpress hosted blogs can have variety of such plugins and other platform can manage to find alternative or simply leave your Email ID.

3. Disclaimer or Legal Notice : In many countries, it is essential to make it known what is done with data provided. This generally includes information about “Privacy policy” and other things which may according to the country.

4. Clear Indication of License for Content : This page is not as essential because if not specifies- your content will be always under traditional copyright Licensening. It means nothing can be done without prior permission from you (Author)

Widgets

5. Search box – It is most essential thing on any webpage which facilitates user to find information on your blog. Using Adsense search box can also make money for you.

6. Category and Tag-Cloud – Categories and Tags are very helpful in finding or navigating any specific topic or keyword on the blog. Tag function is however not available on Blogger platform but still Category widget is always appreciated. Archive according to the period would also solve the purpose of better navigation

7. Subscription Links (by RSS or Email) : It is highly recommended to give vistors two options to subscribe your articles. This helps keeping in touch with new updates on yourblog. You can also provide specific feed aggregator’s link to directly add in his account.

8. Blogroll : It shows the interest of author in various fields. It can also show list of similar sites and index of resource documents.

9. Links to other sites you own : If you own more than one website, it should be told to visitors of your blog. You should be the first promotor of your work.

10. Social Network Connectivity : You probably be having your account on Twitter / Facebook, etc. then don’t hide yourslef. Expose it so that visitor can connect you elsewhere on web and it also helps in increasingblog traffic.

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How to add Related Posts widget in Blogger blogs

If you are searching for a blog widget which help you display the related post on your post footer then you are on right place. I have found some real cool widgets for Blogger blogs which can be added to blogger blogs with ease. These widgets are of great use as the reader spends more time reading your blog and you get the maximum benefit. They are the best way to make reader explore your blog in easy way.

Some of the best assorted widgets are below, so check them out :

How to add Related Posts widget in Blogger blogs

1. Linkwithin Widget :

You can go to Linkwithin.com and get this widget by filling up your Email, Web address , your blogging platform and the number of posts you want to show up. No sign-up is required, just fill up the details and you will see a new page opened with complete instructions on how to install on your blog.


1.1 In the first step click on install widget.


1.2 A blogger window will open then click on add widget.

1.3 That’s it now the widget is added on your blog layout .


1.4 Just move it to the post footer and click on save, now the widget should be visible on your post footer.

2. Blogger Widget :


This widget is from Bloggerplugins.org, it will also display the post the same way Linkwithin widget did. It’s based on displaying the posts accrording to the blogger labels that is the posts related to the same labels are displayed only. This widget is added by editing the html code of your blog. To start applying it open up Edit Html of your blogger blog by signing in to the blogger. Click on the Expand widgets template to open the complete template. Now you have to search for some code and then copy and paste the widget code into the template. You can follow the post here Bloggerplugins.org . Just like the linkwithin widget you can also set the maximum number of post to be displayed by changing the value in this line of code :

var maxresults=5;

So these were the two widgets with thumbnails, there are also other widgets which display only text links to the related posts but I think they do not have much impact on the reader as the ones with thumbnails is more attractive.

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Want The Best Of Blogger?

Want The Best Of Blogger? Use Blogger In Draft!

Hi, I was thinking about how fantastic the Blogger platform is and realized that many people have no idea that Blogger has a enhanced dashboard platform area. A simple little trick to get all the latest beta blogger devices and changes before they become permanent is to use Blogger in draft.

Blogger has a platform called Blogger In Draft! Just use this link and if you have an account with Blogger then you can use this new dash board either permanently or temporarily, as you chose. This is a great way to get the edge on competitors in the blogging field. So do not get left behind get the full blogger experience.

http://draft.blogger.com/
http://bloggerindraft.blogspot.com/ The Blogger in Draft Blog!

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5 Most Needed Blogger Widgets

Blogger Widgets enhance the look and feel and functionality of the blog. 5 Recommended Blogger Widgets:


5 Most Needed Blogger Widgets

1. Headline Animator

This animated widget displays recent post titles in form of headlines and plus it enhances the look of the blog. This widget can be added by joining www.feedburner.com Click the publicize tab and you will see a list which includes the headline animator

2. Share Button
Share Buttons are good for social bookmarking and help your increase the readership.
There are two Buttons

Share Button

AddThis Button

One is from Addthis and Other is Share. Both are equally good but i prefer the share button.It has 39 optional web services to choose from and also others straight away post their content in various social websites.
Link: Share Button , Addthis Button
3. Feedjit

Feedjit gives you live traffic update and shows where readers are coming from and from which site.
Link: Feedjit Widget

4. Clustrmaps

Clustrmaps shows the reader locations on a map.
Link: Clustrmaps Widget


5. Ratings(stars)

This is my personal favourite because it is very useful. It is a very cool widget. It acts a feedback system and you get to know how people feel about your blog. Though blogger has come up with reactions but it still doesn’t have ratings in it. Also it has some good additional features such as Related Posts and Most Popular Posts which are available only on registration.
Link: Ratings Widget

Tags: blogger widgets

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