Widget Tips For Bloggers Part 1

So you finally decided to set up your own blog and it's time for you to add fancy stuff on it. Upon visiting a number of blogs, you can't decide what you want to put. There's just too many out there.

Actually, your decision on what widget to use can be determined by the type of blog you want your site to be. Is it a personal and private one? Do you want to drive lots of traffic to it? Or is it a niche blog to showcase your knowledge on a certain subject?

I don't consider myself an expert but I've seen a quite number of blogs to know what works and what doesn't from a user's standpoint. To help you decide on what widget to use, here are the common ones and my thoughts on them:

1. Top Posts/Popular Posts
This is a widget that showcases the top articles/posts on your site based on the number of hits (views) or the number of comments (popular). If a person stumbles on your site via a search engine, you want him to also check out what other best stuff your site has to offer. This is pretty effective for niche blogs but not so much for the mixed bag type or personal blogs.

Grade: B+. You should definitely use this if you're a niche blog.

2. Recent Posts
Just like the Top Posts, this is also an effective way for your visitors to check out other posts on your site especially if they did not come through the main page. Just make sure that the titles for your posts attract attention or else it would be neglected if seen from the sidebar. This is also a good way to keep your not-so-frequent visitors updated quickly without scrolling down too much.

Grade: A. Quite useful if your blog only shows a few posts per page.

3. Calendar
If you are a new blogger, you might find this widget attractive and can spice up that bare sidebar of yours. Ok , it's cute at first but eventually it just consumes a nice chunk of your sidebar that you can have better use for. You're better of using the Recent Posts to keep your visitors updated.

Grade: F. The only thing this is good for is to let people know quickly how often you update your site. It can do harm if you don't write frequently.

4. Recent Comments
I like this widget especially if I'm a regular visitor on a blog. This widget allows me to see quickly if someone posted a new comment which is very helpful to the owner and the reader. This makes people want to comment on your site more often since they will have a link on the front page.

Grade: A. This is a must have for most blogs. However, blogs that are getting very few comments or the other extreme, very large amount of comments per day might see this as a waste of space.

This is it for now. I'll continue with other common widgets on my next post. I have a few more in mind but if you have suggestions on what other widgets that you commonly see, please feel free to comment.