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Top 5 essential widgets a blog's sidebar must have

Posted by angelohero • 3/12/09 • Subscribe to this Discussion [RSS] • Report This Topic
Topics: blog, musthaves, widgets

Here is a ranking of the Top 5 essential widgets a blog's sidebar must have. Reactions and suggestions are all welcome on the comments area. If your suggestions give very strong points, this entry will be updated to include yours.

1. Recent Posts - This is self-explanatory. For Blogger blogs, a Recent Posts widget is very important. If you want to advertise every post you make and want the new ones noticed fast, then their titles must appear right away on the sidebar through this widget. However, due to the "newspaper style" capacity of Wordpress blogs, a Recent Posts widget is not that needed there. A newspaper style could allow up to 10+ previews of posts still with the scrollbar long enough. In Blogger blogs, 10+ posts in the homepage could make the scrollbar so tiny your readers would easily bounce away from your blog.
2. Subscription Link or Form - Make your readers loyal with this widget. If your posts are interesting and useful enough (or has a high quality for short), then readers would want to be updated on the latest from your blogs. A subscription via RSS, a reader or e-mail is a convenient way for a reader to receive updates from you. Seeing a Subscription Link or Form could possibly entice readers to give it a try, or maybe seriously subscribe to your posts.
3. Popular Posts - A great way to endorse the best posts that you made, those that made it to the top in the search engine results and those that made the most number of comments. Well obviously this is not just to take pride of your blog but to serve your new readers the best of the best so they would enjoy your blog and subscribe after. Many blogs forget this part.
4. Labels or Tags - Even the most-specific-niched blog posts could be broken up into several tags. This is how this widget is of use, clearly categorizing each tags into clear and proper groupings so users would find it easy to reach posts that they are finding with a specific topic (or label). This is to make sure that readers finding about Paris would not end up reading about Japan.
5. Pages or Links to Internal Pages - Usually, this is where links to the Contact Me, About and Blogroll reside. These are just links but they point to very important pages on a blog. The Contact Me is very important as it promotes an interaction between blogger and reader. About is one of the most important internal pages that a blogger must not forget. Sometimes a reader would directly search for that page even before taking a look at your posts. A Blogroll page is optional
IF YOU HAVE ANY ADDITION TO THIS LIST PLEASE LET ME KNOW

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User Comments

3/12/09

KristinaMay

I came across "Scoutle" yesterday.

www.scoutle.com/en

It's relatively new, but I think it has great potential.

The idea is that you get a scout and a small dynamic badge on your site which is "visited" by scouts from other sites. The widget helps you find others with similar sites and presents you with lists of potential matches by relevance which you can edit.

It's both fun and handy. My problem is that I have quite a niche topic for my blog so there aren't many with similar interests on Scoutle yet. I added it anyway though, and hope more will join me there soon!

The animation is good anyway, and you get to name your scout and determine it's greeting.

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3/12/09

carbontwelve

Could have put some spaces in that post of yours, huge block of text = difficult to read

Can't think of any others to add to the list, it seems pretty well put together.

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3/13/09

dekadaye

thanks for the advice
just added a popular posts widget!

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3/13/09

codesucker

Thanks for this. You've convinced me I need #3. Popular Posts

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5/30/09

hulingelbimbo

comment removed due to link dropping.

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5/30/09

rahardian

comment removed due to link dropping.

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10/23/09

cafe007

comment removed due to link dropping.

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10/23/09

BeamingBalance

I've seen the "popular posts" widget... but haven't been able to figure out how to do it.

Can someone please provide some insight? Thanks in advance!

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10/27/09

skyje

i have wrote a post about 200 wordpress plugins and widgets suitable for sidebar.it allows you to move plugins (widgets) around, in and out of your sidebar.
here: skyje.com/2009/07/200-wordpress-plugins-sidebar/

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