Web Development Blog » Web 2.0

Using Wordpress widgets for an improved blogging experience

Olaf — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 22:09:48 +0000

Widget is a funny name, but as with many other names online, it’s largely become a commonplace term within the blogging community, at least the blogging community that uses the world-renowned Wordpress blogging software.

What are Wordpress widgets?

“Wordpress widgets” is a term that is used to describe the easy-to-use sidebar functions in any of the widget ready Wordpress themes. From within your Wordpress blog’s administration area, through the use of client-side scripting languages; Ajax and JavaScript, users can “click and drag” certain sidebar elements and rearrange them to meet their ideal sidebar setup. These elements include the blog search box, links, pages, meta (containing admin login links, rss feed links), categories, most recent posts and text-box elements.

Today, nearly all up-to-date Wordpress themes are widget ready, meaning that instead of manually having to modify code in the sidebar.php file for your active Wordpress template to get your desired look, in order to modify the look of your Wordpress themes’ sidebar, you only need to click on the desired element to add it to the sidebar or re-arrange the elements in any widget ready theme.

Easy to use Wordpress “widgetry”

Wordpress, in and of itself, has always been user friendly; self-installation of the blogging software is a breeze for anybody who has experience using FTP software, and installation is even easier if your web server has Fantastico installed with your website’s control panel. Installing Wordpress using Fantastico literally offers a 2 click install of this popular blogging software.

Offering widget ready Wordpress themes only adds to the simplicity of using Wordpress; literally offering its non-technical users the ability to click and drag their way to a customized blogging experience.

Where to find widget ready Wordpress Themes
There are hundreds of websites that offer Wordpress themes, but probably the most comprehensive database of Wordpress themes is at the Wordpress website itself; having over 1,500 free Wordpress blog templates that you can choose from. You can limit your search by color, number of columns, fluid-width or fixed width themes, widget ready themes, templates with rounded corners and even limit the theme search to sidebars that appear on the left or right side of the template.

You can take a check out a large database of Wordpress themes using the Wordpress theme viewer.

Popular and Powerful Wordpress Widgets

The Wordpress website offers a comprehensive list of Wordpress widgets, though some of links are a bit out of date. You can check out some of the available Wordpress widgets here and here.

However, we would like to point out a couple of the more popular Wordpress widgets and how they can improve your blogging experience.

ExecPHP
If you’ve messed around with Wordpress themes that are widget ready, you know about the text-boxes that you can add to or rearrange on your sidebar. ExecPHP is a text-box widget with a twist; one where you can insert PHP code into it and the code will execute. While running this text-box widget essentially does exactly what adding the PHP code to your sidebar.php will do, when using it as a widget, it becomes a point, click and copy operation instead of having to edit the sidebar.php file manually.

Flexi Pages Widget
The Flexi Pages Widget can give users more freedom to configure and control the pages widget on any widget ready Wordpress theme.

IM Online
IM Online is a Wordpress widget that will display your online status using popular instant messaging platforms such as AOL, MSN, Yahoo!, Jabber, Google Talk and Skype; giving your blog readership the ability to see when you are available, and contact you, no matter what instant messaging platform they prefer.

Because Wordpress offers a blogging platform that is continually growing in popularity, it is becoming increasingly difficult to differentiate your Wordpress blog from the tens of thousands already online. By using widget ready Wordpress themes, you are easily able to make your blog unique simply by clicking and dragging any number of freely available Wordpress widgets into your templates sidebar; thus almost guaranteeing a unique experience for your blogs readership. “Widget” may indeed be a funny name, but even so, you sure can’t deny the fact that these gizmos with a funny name are easy to use.

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A social Icon trading community

Olaf — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 22:31:21 +0000

IconBuffet was already since a longer time a place to get professional Icons for a small price and also to get “free deliverys”. Today I noticed that this Icon web shop is mutated into a social community with the ability to trade Icons, and to share information / weblogs.

The best thing is the membership (also the traded Icons) is free: Just join and get 10 free tokens (once a month?) which are good for ~3 professional Icon sets. If you deliver Icons you got before from friends to other friends you earn some “Stamps”.

Invite friends to this free community to earn “points” (don’t know what you can do with them at the moment) and I think you earn also points if you post blogs or if the delivered Icon sets are accepted by your friends.

The Icon set is a complete series of Icons in different file formats (gif, ico, png and others)

… and this is result of my first day at the Icon Buffet community:

a total of 90 points
18 new friends (webmasters / designer)
got 5 new Icon sets
Check my profile page at Icon Buffet here and if you like to join this cool community for web masters and designer click here.Similar Posts:

CSS navigation bar with stylish web2.0 elements

Olaf — Tue, 27 Feb 2007 22:29:57 +0000

Marino from TechSymptom is great web-designer and started a series of Fireworks tutorials on web 2.0 styled navigation bars. The last one inspired me to create this small CSS tutorial.

UPDATE: Based on the tutorials from techSyptom we created a new tutorial, check the tutorial via link below,

After we finished the design tutorial we need to create 2 simple images to style our CSS navigation bar: A background image (the light blue bar) and a transparent button that indicate the active state, all other elements are created with CSS.

Like in most CSS horizontal navigation bars an unordered list is used to hold the menu items:

With the next CSS code it’s possible to style the horizontal navigation bar:

#container {
width:800px;
height:600px;
padding:20px;
}
ul#navbar {
background:url(/tutorials/web20_css_bar/backgr.jpg) repeat-x left top;
margin:0;
border-bottom:3px solid #98CB00;
border-top:1px solid #00CCFF;
list-style-type:none;
height:31px;
}
ul#navbar li {
float:left;
}
ul#navbar li a {
display:block;
padding:5px 15px 4px;
font:bold 16px "Trebuchet MS";
text-decoration:none;
color:#00CCFF;
letter-spacing: -0.1em;
}
ul#navbar li a:hover {
color:#98CB00;
}
ul#navbar li a#current {
background:url(/tutorials/web20_css_bar/current.gif) no-repeat center bottom;
color:#98CB00;
}

We placed the background image behind “ul” element and added the two borders to the top and bottom. The li element is defined as a floated block element and got some padding to create a bigger button. The last definition is for the current state, which will show up the tri-angle. You need some server-side code (php) to get a dynamic position every time a different page is loaded.

That’s all, download the example files here.Similar Posts:

This generation web advertising

Olaf — Tue, 07 Nov 2006 21:21:47 +0000

After writing last week a short review about the advertisement site 43ads.com I got some interesting comments about other nice Web 2.0 styled advertising ideas.

bla.st
This is a nice combination of free and paid advertising, in the beginning you will get a spot on the first page of common key words like “web-design”. Interesting at this site is, that your ad is live after submission and the possibility to get a direct information how much a bid will raise your ad on selected pages. The website is really clear and you get the chance to have a 270×165 pixel banner ad for free.

ispuare
I found this advertising site via other blogs about the popular “Web 2.0 advertising thing”. Placing a link is for free and after that I got the invitation to get also a free “square” in exchange for a link. Sure the websites idea is very “original”, but I’m not sure that this is the “coolest” way to surf the internet. Placing a square inclusive an extra text link is € 50 at the moment.

At the end I’m asking me, who will visit all the websites behind the ads? In these days there is a lot of traffic because of all the blog posts but what about the real visitors a website need to sell products?Similar Posts:

Where do you start your daily Internet session?

Olaf — Sun, 22 Oct 2006 08:28:18 +0000

In the beginning the internet has already several portal sites (like Yahoo or all the start pages with hundreds of links), to give the visitor the most important links, an Internet search option or just information.

Today in the Web 2.0 generation, communities are the hot place where people start surfing every day. People like to meet people with related interests and like to see what other people has posted to items they have placed or commented the day before.
For example the webdigity forum is evaluated into a community since people are not only there for the forum but also for other stuff like the tutorials, the CSS design gallery, the link directory and last but not least the features like the forums shop where people can buy things with the points they earned while posting at the forum.

The recent change on the main page, to creat a unique (non forum like) interface, is another step into the direction to build a community for webmasters. As an active member of Webdigity I know that there is more than webmaster related stuff; it’s also fun: Like the Blogotition started by some members or the crazy post contest some month before.

Check also Daniel Fisher’s article about Internet communities and this interesting post about the Webdigy main page.Similar Posts:

Create your lens @ squidoo.com

Olaf — Tue, 22 Aug 2006 21:49:49 +0000

While reading some secrets about link building techniques I stumbled over the squidoo community. Like on other websites like MySpace it’s possible to create your personal page (a lens) and you can add there content like news, RSS feeds, links and of course your own content like text and images. The one thing what was new to me is that you can earn money with your lens; they have a kind of profit sharing. There are already Google AdSense ads between your content blocks and it’s allowed to add additional advertisements (for example banners) on your lens page and if your lens has a lot of traffic, you earn some money (don’t ask me how much). According the article I read about link building it should boost the traffic to your site because people are reading your lens and there would be also a good Google PageRank after a while.
Checkout my own lens @ squidoo.comSimilar Posts: