What and how to use widgets

…

Step by step instructions on how to work with widgets and what uses they have on your side bar.
…

Click on the button to download a pdf of this page.

First, a glossary (important = read it to understand this e-course fully):

Post = an entry, article, piece of writing or message in your blog.

Dashboard = main menu or hub of a blog which provides access to the various elements.

Internet Spiders = robots that search the internet looking for keywords and new material to help with SEO.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) = improving organic or natural search engine results using spiders.

Interaction = the ability to contribute or comment on the internet via blogs and forums.

Keywords (Tags) = words that are currently being searched for in search engines and are therefore attractive to internet spiders.

Categories = archived topic pages to store posts for research or retrieval purposes.

Permalink = each posts’ own specific URL created from its headline or title.

So what are widgets?

These are the applications on your right side bar that enable you to see what pages, posts, comments, tags, categories or whatever you have on your blog (see the area highlighted below):

There are many more than what is shown here (the default ones Wordpress offer you), and I will show you how to put up the more useable selection of widgets which will make your blog look and act more professional than the ones here.

First, go to your dashboard and click on widgets under Appearances:

Which brings up the widgets page:

Each widget is listed alphabetical, named in its own blue bar, and accompanying them is an empty sidebar on the right and an inactive widgets box at the bottom should you want to store any widgets you have customised without losing their information (saves you having to do them all over again).

What you have to do is to choose the widgets you prefer, and drag them individually across into the sidebar. As you drag them a box will appear in the side bar and you drop your chosen widget into it. There they will open for you to customise if necessary, and you save them by clicking on the save button.

You can also move your widgets around into different positions in your sidebar by dragging them to your desired location; the other widgets will move out of the way and create a space for the moving widget.

The widgets I recommend at this stage are: pages, recent posts, top posts, recent comments, categories, tag cloud, links, blog stats, archives, calendar and Meta (where you can easily access the dashboard).

Once you’ve set up all your widgets you can look at your blog by clicking ‘View Site’ at the top next to your blog’s title in the blue bar.

For more advanced bloggers you can also add the Twitter and RSS widgets as long as you have the necessary information to go with them. You will need your Twitter username and your RSS feed URL for any other blogs you may have. The RSS widget is not suitable for the feed for this blog, that needs to be done through a text widget and I will show you how in the visual e-course ‘Setting up RSS’.

Wordpress will acknowledge the Twitter and blog RSS URL and will feed into these widgets when you go to look at your blog’s page (go to ‘View Site’ at the top next to your blog’s title in the blue bar). There you will see your latest Tweets and post links for the blog you’ve chosen:

To change the links in your blogroll, read my visual e-course ‘Editing your blogroll or links’.

There are also text widgets, which are for text messages in your side bar. You can also use them to put in simple HTML for linked images and the code for your RSS feed of this blog. More information can be found in my visual e-course ‘Setting up RSS’.

Details of the above e-course and other visual e-courses can be found by visiting my Make a blog pages. If you have any questions, click on the fairy blog mother icon and send me an email.