Discussions
Widgets........
Posted by lordiwanttobewhole • 1/02/09 • Subscribe to this Discussion [RSS] • Report This Topic
Topics: blog, widgets
I love widgets!!! How many are too many? I hope I'm not getting carried away!!!!!
Does anybody else love widgets??
User Comments
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Yes, I like to add widgets in my blog and I have *a few* there.
Please feel free to check out my site www.joanne-chan.blogspot.com
p/s: I have a *radio* widget there.. -
I went to your blog and started reading and forgot why I was there. I had to go back to check out the widgets. Very inspiring words you have.
The widgets load rather slowly on my old computer, but I'm there for your content anyway. Keep up the great work. -
Nah. I like your lava clock. -
Avoid widget over kill
There is a trend I have noted among blogspot bloggers to overuse widgets as sidebar decorations and space fillers, without contemplating the impact of the amount of script they have running on their blogs on their readers.
Too many widgets on a page will kill a blog's design and turn off visitors. How should you gauge whether or not you have too many widgets on your blog? Check other blogs and see what kind of an impact widgets have on your experience as a reader. Widgets don't only spoil the design and give the blog an amateurish appearance, but they also compromise blog speed (page loading time), in short viewers have to wait for widgets to load before they can interact with your blog. This may not seem important to bloggers on high speed broadband service but most people surfing the web today are on dial-up service. Keeping the amount of widgets and other sidebar clutter to a minimum may seem like common sense to veteran bloggers but to new bloggers the lure of adding widgets may be too overwhelming to pass up.
Consider that readers come to our blogs to read our content. They don't come to our blogs to view our awards, badges and buttons and they have no interest in seeing where every other visitor is coming from. Yet every day I witness distracting and tacky looking widget clutter in the sidebars of many personal blogs. The important point here is that widgets and other sidebar clutter distract readers by drawing the eyes and mind away from dwelling on the content in our posts.
The test for whether or not to add a widget or any sidebar link to your blog is whether or not it provides additional resources to the reader and thereby enhances the readers' experience. If it doesn't then don't add it.
Why having a well designed blog is important onecoolsite.wordpress.com/2008/11/02/why-having-a-well-designed-blog-is-imp...-
Do you think my site has too many sidebar widgets? I think its close, but reasonable. I used to have the facebook login widget but it was really really slow. (made my load time 10s, which is very very unacceptable) -
you have many widgets but they seem to 'fit' your blog. Your blog seems to fit the amount of widgets you have. Thats my opinion...don't know how much that means
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Thanks for your opinion
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Your welcome! your blog feels like an amusement park with all those widgets haha!
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hopefully thats a good thing
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Timethief, I went back to this discussion and read what your feelings about excessive widgets. I removed a couple more of mine, including my lava clock It makes sense what you say. Thanks for your words of wisdom.
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You're welcome. I think it looks better myself but then I admitted my prejudice up front.
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I'm going to look at my widgets again now after reading your thoughts on this TT. Thanks!
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You're welcome
FWIW I would remove both the distracting and unnecessary lava clock and the feedjit.
(1) We all have clocks on out computers so providing the time is not a benefit to readers. In fact, reminding readers how much time they are spending on our blogs does not encourage them to stay and read more content.
You may find it relaxing to watch your lava clock but I would question why you would be devoting time to clock watching on the front of your blog, as opposed to, working in the Admin area by writing more posts.
(2) The feedjit is completely unnecessary bit of "tat" (useless sh*t that provides third party sites with reader's personal information) but provides no direct benefit to the readers themselves.
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there ok, but some can really slow your blog down -
I think i have arnd 5.. And i feel it is too much -
I really love my lava clock....I cleaned some up though....had to leave the lava clock...so relaxing to watch!
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For almost 2 years I have only had the BC recent visitors widget. Last week I added the WP CommentLuv widget. I like the widget as I can quickly see a person's last post and can click on that link should I want to visit their site. Also I don't like the FeedJit widget and live traffic feed as it isn't correct as it says I'm from Macedonia, Illinois which I'm not. It thinks that because I have satellite internet with Hughes. I'm actally in Washington state so don't always believe what FeedJit states.-
@recyclecindy
lol ... it's the same thing with me. The feedjit sometimes says I'm from Victoria, other times from Vancouver, Parksville or Cloverdale ... lol ... I'm not in any of those locations.
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i am expert on widgets , you can ask me whatever you want connected to widgets , or visit my blog -
I used to have a TON - cut it down just today and I feel the page looks a lot cleaner. I may add some back in later if I rework the background style, but for now less is more. -
Click my icon and check out my blog and let me know what you think. I think that it should not be too much widgets on the page. It is very important to have impressive content posts.
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