Turn Your Blog into a Widget

Did you know that you can turn your blog into a widget to display on your website and make available for others to display on their blog or website. A brilliant way to link your website and blog or to advertise your products/advice on other sites. The widget displays your most recent posts as headlines which people can click on to go straight to your blog.

See a screen shot of my widget below. I have added a link to “My Blog Widget” in my blogroll in case anyone wants to download it and add it to their sidebar.

What is a Widget?
Simply put, a widget is a portable chunk of the web. Ie. A small frame showing content from a website or blog.

How to Create Your Own Widget

1. Go to www.widgetbox.com
2. Click on Make a Blidget
3. Type your blog address including the http://
4. Click Continue
5. Choose a colour theme
6. Display headlines only
7. Select Header style ( if you check Title and Image you can select an image from one of your posts which will show up in the box below)
8. Enter a title, caption, description and tags (like keywords)
9. Choose whether to list in the gallery (so other people can find and download your widget)
10. When you are happy with how your blidget looks on the preview, click on the “Publish Widget” button.
11. At this point, you need to register (create a free account)
12. Once you see the Congratulations page, click the “Get Widget” button

Putting a Widget onto Your Website

To display your widget on your website, click on “Get Widget Code”, copy the javascript and paste into the code of your webpage where you want the widget to appear. For a hosted WordPress blog, you can paste the code into a text widget. (Widgetbox will send you an email with your unique address) Unfortunately, free WordPress blogs do not support javascript so you’ll have to make do with a “permalink” to your widget on your blogroll or inside a page or post.

If your posts include photos, you can choose to show the first image in each post on the widget which makes it a lot more visually appealing.

Add a Cool Widgets to Your Blog

If you browse the Gallery on WidgetBox, you can browse widgets by category and pick something relevant to your blog to download and add to your sidebar. My favourite is Jackson Pollock’s Widget which allows you to create your own artwork “Jackson Pollock style” using your mouse.

Have fun and please let me know if you put my widget on your blog so I can link to it in this article.

You can also read this article on the Home Bizz Buzz Website.