I just discovered this site where you can make a widget of your own blog posts. They call it a “blidget.”

This widget, or blidget, automatically picks up and displays your last few blog posts. It is your very own private BlogRush-type widget, featuring only your own blog!

Others can then get your blidget and put it on their blogs if they want to keep up with your posts (sort of like putting the Digg widget on your blog). Or you can put your blidget on other blogs and/or websites that you own.

Not only that, but when you create a blidget, you can then easily add it to your Facebook, MySpace, LiveJournal, or other site by clicking a button. It’s all very automated and easy.

Here is an example that I made for this blog:

You can customize your widget, and others who get your widget to put on their blog can customize it to suit their site.

Register, and you can store your widgets and have them listed in a blog directory for others to see (and maybe post on their blogs).

Also, by registering your blog, you get a free link back to your site from what is sure to be a highly Google-ranked site as it catches on. (That’s great for getting traffic and helping raise your blog’s ranking).

This is really fun stuff! Go see for yourself at Widgetbox.com.

If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

I use Blog Design Journal as a sort of blog design laboratory. I constantly try out new widgets, plug-ins, ads and what-not.

So far, experimenting here has worked out well. It keeps me from piddling with my other blogs too much and annoying the readers any more than necessary.

Trying out Widgets

You really do need to try out widgets on your blogs. Great new ones come out all the time, while old ones quit working. Sadly some cool-sounding widgets just don’t work out. You can’t know for sure till you try them.

Page-Loading Slowed to a Crawl

Recently I joined a beta-testing group for Jonathan Leger’s new project, Real Traffic Exchange. I was thrilled.

Then I installed the widget on my blog, and it slowed to a crawl, maybe even a backstroke. Also, it seemed as though the scrollbars were not working right. I want to give Real Traffic Exchange a fair trial. I have great hopes for it! (As soon as I have the results, I’ll post them here.)

Removing Widgets

So I started removing other widgets, hoping that would speed up page loading. The first thing to go was my newest fun toy, The Gaping Void cartoon widget. It is, frankly, the hardest to justify of all the widgets. I just love it, that’s all.

Sometimes you have to give up widgets you enjoy, for various reasons. I removed the Digg widget, for example, because it was killing my productivity. It was just too tempting to click the links and then spend too much time reading news stories and the comments on them.

But removing The Gaping Void didn’t help. I was trying to figure out what else do part with, when it dawned on me that I had installed two or three toolbars in Firefox that were just taking up real estate. I never used them.

Firefox Toolbar Troubles

Then the real trouble started. Firefox slowed nearly to a stop and almost would not let me disable those toolbars. I turned of the Google bar, the StumbledUpon Bar, the Smart Toolbar (whatever that is), and low and behold, I can use Firefox again.

The Real Traffic Exchange widget was not the culprit. It was Firefox and those pesky toolbars.

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Is it just me, or has this blog widget thing just gotten completely out of control?

It seems like every site that offers any kind of service these days requires that you put their particular giant, gaudy widget on your site.

I don’t mind inserting snippets of javascript or PHP code. I don’t even mind having to paste code in specific spots in the theme pages.

I can live with small, discrete badges and other backlinks on my pages. But I’m sick and tired of being required to install big, ugly widgets that clash with my site.

Now, because everybody and his dog is creating and mandating their own widgets, a lot of them don’t even work properly. They seem to be just dashing them off and making me beta test them. That is really annoying!

If anyone from any of those sites ever reads this, here’s some advice. If you’re going to require that people put your widgets on their sites in order to do business with you, make sure they work properly and make sure they are resizable or very small—or at least can be customized to blend into the site.

While you’re at it, make sure your online widget-generation application works well with all major browsers on all three major operating systems (and not just the latest version, please?). And make the customization easy!

BlogRush may have a big widget, but at least you can change the colors in a couple of seconds at their site. You don’t have to cut and paste the code into your blog every time. Now if only they were not trying to dictate where you can put it, their widget would be almost perfect. (A resizable widget with completely customizable colors and typefaces would be perfect.)

How do you feel about the new Technorati widget? I cannot get it to work properly. (You can just deselect options all you want to on their site, but when you paste it into your site, it still displays as the full, giant, ugly monster that clashes with everything.

What do you think about the whole widget proliferation thing? Good? Bad? Ugly? Feel free to vent by leaving a comment.

Sometimes the quickest, easiest way to accomplish a design task is to “cheat.” Instead of editing PHP code for example, you can adjust the space above or below a WordPress widget in a couple of simple ways.

1. Go to Presentation > Widgets, and click on the text icon on the widget to open it.

Note: Some widgets won’t open and can’t be edited,
but usually the widget above or below them can be.
In that case, pick one of those, or rearrange widgets.

2. If you know the widget is a text widget, but the text icon is not visible,
even when you click on it, you may need to drag the widget out of the sidebar,
replace it in the unused widgets area below, and then drag it back. The text
icon will then reappear.

3. With the text for the widget displayed, add an empty paragraph or two
above or below the existing text. For example: < p > < / p >

Note: The example has spaces added between parts of the code
so it will show in Wordpress (instead of WP reading it as actual code
and inserting a blank line in this post). When putting the code in your
widgets, do not use the spaces. (Remember that if you need to show code.)

4. Close the text box and Save Changes.

5. Click on the View Site link.

Now there should be extra space wherever you added a line < p > < / p >.
If not, go back and add a period ( . ) between the < p > and < / p >.
For example: < p > . < / p >

6. Save your changes again. Click on the View Site link again.

7. Check to see if the spacing is what you wanted.

If not, add or delete lines (by adding < p > . < / p > for each new line)
until you are happy with the vertical spacing (or it’s the best you can do).

The periods are hardly noticeable on screen. If you scroll down and look closely, you can see one above the BlogRush widget, where I added an extra line.

You can make these changes very quickly. More important, you can make them without really knowing PHP or HTML.

Does this happen to you, too? I keep running out of text widgets. WordPress only gives you nine.

So when you have used all nine text widgets, and you just have to add one more script or ad, what do you do? If there’s a text widget immediately above or below where you want to put the new one, no problem!

1. Copy the script or code you need to add.

2. Log into your WordPress admin area.

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Blog design directly affects profitability. Choosing the right widgets when designing your blog can help you make money. A new widget from PayPerPost.com makes it easier to make deal directly with advertisers.

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