This is a continued list of Blog Widgets, Gadgets and Add-ons which you can include into your Blog. If you have not read the first part, please check out Blog Widgets, Gadgets and Add-ons (I). You may also consider having a chatbox, shoutbox or message board on your Blog. We ended with AuctionAds which can earn you some extra revenue. We begin this second part with a fun widget that you can have.
Punkymoods
“The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of.” ... Blaise Pascal
If you are writing an online diary about personal events, you may want to let your readers know at a glance your mood at the current moment. Punkymoods does just that. Get a free account and add their code to your Blog. Whenever your mood changes, login to their site and set the mood. The image or emoticon displayed on your Blog will be automatically changed to show your current mood.
ChipIn
Organizing a fund-raising event and want readers to contribute to the funds? ChipIn provides a widget which gives an up-to-date status and a secure means of collecting the funds.
Clustrmaps
Most of us would have used statcounters to keep track of the number of visitors to our sites. Numbers alone may be a little stale, and if you like something more graphic which shows the locations of your visitors, open a free account with Clustrmaps.
Go to Admin page and copy the HTML code into your Blog. Their service is free if you have not more than 2,500 visitors per day.
Answers.com
Do you always have to explain terms and jargons used on your site? Incorporate some free Answer tools like AnswerTips and AnswerBoxes from Answers.com for your visitors to obtain instant answers to key words and queries.
Blufr
Also powered by Answers.com is the widget by Blufr where viewers are posed a question which could either be true or a bluff. [Update: Service is no longer available and link is therefore removed.]
TheFreeDictionary
This site TheFreeDictionary has more free tools for you to choose from. You could have a simple dictionary lookup box.
You could also consider other useful resources like Word of the Day, Article of the Day, This day in history, Today's birthday, In the News, Quote of the Day and games like Spelling Bee, Match Up and Hangman.
LibraryThing
If you have a collection of books, you might find the service at LibraryThing useful. Here, you can create an online catalog of your books and be connected to people around the world who share similar collections. You can place a widget on your Blog to let people know what you are reading.
Vizu
Creating a blog poll to collect opinions from your readers has never been easier. With Vizu you can create a poll using customized templates and insert the polling widget into your Blog. If you'd like extra income, they will pay you to host selected webpolls through their Vizu Answers scheme.
WeLoveWidgets
Teaming up with Astrologer.com, WeLoveWidgets provides a horoscope widget that updates itself and lets you see who you are compatible with.
Technorati
This site was discussed in our article on Submit Blog to Blog Directories (I). Check out the blog widgets offered by Technorati too. You can have widgets displaying the top tags of your Blog and number of Links, or try their new Authority widget to show your status as an authoritative blogger. Again, this is based on the number of blogs linking to you.
© Tips for New Bloggers
May 15, 2007
Blog Widgets, Gadgets and Add-ons (II)
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8 comments:
Wow, this is a very informative post. I was looking for ways to add current mood to my posts when I cam across this. Is there any other site other than punkmoods that you know of?
Hi Smriti
If I come across any other interesting sites, I'll add to this list.
HI Biz!
First wanted to Thank you a million times over for providing all the information I needed to bring my blogger back to life. It was so boring and lifeless I abandon it while ago for 360. Now with your help I am creating a blog on blogger that I have total control over. Thanks!
Second - I followed the blufr link and unfortunately it states "blufr is no more". They discontinued the service.
Third - I wanted to change the background color of a couple of my sidebar elements (like "About Me") but I don't know how. I looked at your site but couldn't find anything.
Four - I also signed up for "FeedBurner" and created an animated scrolling widget for my blog posts like the one you wrote about. What I'd like to know, is how did you get yours to link directly to your blog instead of the FeedBurner site?
Thanks for the helpful information and the great site!! I hope you don't mind I put a link to you at the top of my blog http://tarasutopia.blogspot.com.
Thanks
Tara
Hi Tara
Thanks for letting us know about Blufr. We shall update the article.
The how-to guide to changing background colors can be found at Background Image for Blogger Template. If you want to change only one specific element, we shall write a guide tomorrow and post it in our Blogger FAQ blog.
As for the Feedburner, our widgets here link to our Feedburner URL or the Feedburner main site. Anyway, if you want to change that, where it says href="FEEDBURNER URL", change it to "YOUR BLOG URL".
Thanks for the list! I think I will enjoy punkymood.
BTW, I am wondering if you can help. I used to have librarything widget in my blog but changed it to anobii.com since i feel it is the next best with no limit on number of books. But I seem to have a problem with the widget - it displays with bullet points and line breakers. I tried it on a new 'rounded' theme and same problem. Could you help? thanks!
Hi pearlie
Many third party providers do not like users to modify their widget codes, primarily because they want their widgets to appear in a certain manner or layout. You would have to raise your query with them.
Hi bizwhiz,
I did raise it with them but no answer for quite awhile and so I gotta search for my own solution :)
Anyway, I seem to be learning CSS on-the-fly :) as I have just removed this section from my template HTML:
.sidebar ul li {
background:url("http://www.blogblog.com/rounders4/icon_arrow_sm.gif") no-repeat 2px .25em;
margin:0;
padding:0 0 3px 16px;
margin-bottom:3px;
border-bottom:1px dotted $borderColor;
line-height:1.4em;
}
It worked for the anobii widget BUT now my blogroll list do not have bullets. It's either-or. Sigh ...
Thanks anyway :)
Hi pearlie
I reiterate. Third party providers are sticky about the way their widgets look. If you don't like this particular widget, perhaps search for another one. I would not suggest that you amend your template just to accommodate one widget.
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