I hear many folks use WordPress. They often talk about "widgets." What's a widget? Are they a good thing to have on your blog?
What's a widget? Are they good for blogs?
(3 posts) (3 voices)
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Good question, I'm not sure what the "technical definition" of a widget is. All I know is that you can use different widgets such as Digg, WP Greet Box, etc...these are tools that you can use to "dress up" your blog. I've heard that using a lot of widgets can slow your website down...
Posted 2 years ago # -
Hmmm.......I think it's the plugins that can slow your blog down, which many people confuse with widgets.
Widgets are small snippets of code -- many of which come standard with WordPress - that help you customize your sidebar, or sometimes (but rarely) your header or footer. Most often they are used in the sidebar.
Some Themes will have 'hard coded' sections for displaying things like a list of your Pages, or a list of your (recent) Posts, or maybe a list of recent comments, popular Tags, etc. Hard coding is not necessarily a bad thing, but it means that you have to edit your Theme's sidebar.php file if you want to move those modules to a different location - not at all something that most people are comfortable doing, so enter the Widget. Savvy Theme developers recognize that you'll want the ability to determine for yourself how you want your sidebar organized, so they create their them to be "widgetized" or "widget ready" meaning that you "drop" the widgets that you want into the place (in your sidebar) that you want them. Thusly you can personalize your Blog so it displays what you want, where you want it.
Here is a link to a page at WordPress.tv that features a variety of "how to" videos about widgets:
http://wordpress.tv/category/how-to/widgets-how-to/Posted 2 years ago #
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