About Widgets
October 21, 2007 – Libby Davy – Print
Thanks to Ivan Pope (again) for leading me down the rabbit hole via his highly absorbing widget haven, the one and only Snipperoo. I’m now getting all widgety!
Widgets are nifty little things you can add to your blog or other website to personalise it. Wordpress’s official blogger Lorelle calls it “accessorizing” (that’s one for the girls).
Facebook applications are widgets, eg. that lovely Bob Dylan one, tag clouds are widgets. The search box on the top right of this blog is a widget.
“Widgets” is just a silly buzzword we’ve chosen for this sidebar-chopping plug-in we have developed. They could have been called Gadgets or Gizmos or Wizbangs or Whatevers. On the surface, they’re just things you can use to personalize your WordPress site without knowing HTML. Way down deep, they may be something entirely more significant. Anyway, here’s a peek…” more at automatic.
Note for Authentic Blogging students: we are all using Wordpress 2.2 or later so it already supports widgets under Dashboard > Presentation > Widgets.
To find out more go to Snipperoo and Wikipedia. These sites go a lot deeper in terms of the commercial and social implications of widgets. Snipperoo is where you go to get loads of cool widgets.
To find out how to use widgets on your Wordpress blog.
If you want more flexibility in how you “pimp your blog”, then you might need to upgrade to Wordpress.org.
[...] What is that you might ask? Well, if you have ever been on Facebook (ah, yes I guess the answer would be for most), you might have noticed all the applications you get sucked into using and sharing. Well, these are widgets. See previous post about what a widget is here. [...]