If you haven’t heard the news yet, Blogger has completed and released the ability to add gadgets to your blog. The gadgets are super easy to add to your blog, and you don’t need anyone like me to tell you how to do it. I’m including the help video from Blogger.com themselves to do that.
There are 8 different categories already defined, and you can even add your own gadgets that you find around the web! That’s really cool.
The coolest thing about gadgets is that they are easy to work with, they bring the technology to more people, and now we should start seeing a whole new mess of stuff on blogger.com blogs.
The only thing I can recommend here, is do not over-do it. It would be easy to drop all these different gadgets that each have their own look, and their own particular function. Not only will these potentially make your page load much slower for your visitors. I guess what I’m trying to say is, ask yourself is this gadget for me, or my visitors? That answer will tell you if you should add it to your blog or not. As a blogger looking to gain a large readership, I am very critical of the gadgets and functionality I throw up on my blog. However, if I were a hobbyist, then perhaps I wouldn’t mind all the bells and whistles. In the end, make sure the gadget helps you to reach your goal, whatever that may be.
Here are a few helpful links I found along the way while digging in to this:
- iGoogle Gadgets – Directory of Gadgets that can be uploaded to your blog (here’s a different ‘browse’ page.
- Google Modules – An Unofficial site that carries a few modules
- EpistemeLinks – An eclectic mix of informational gadgets.
I’ll be tinkering around with the gadgets over the next few days to see all they can do. I may even go build myself a gadget over at Google Gadgets. Cheers!
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Ah I think its great these gadgets realy add some nice functionality, that otherwise would have been a pain to implement.
How can i add gadgets in my joshoon sidebar? Joshoon sidebar is a sidebar for xp. I dont know how to add gadgets on it.thanks..
Where can I learn more about the slideshow gadget? I want to tweak it so my own photos are in the slideshow.
There is nothing inherently wrong with using Javascript, however if the content is provided by way of Javascript, I can see where search engines may not be able to pick up the content that they provide.
There are many ways around that issue Izu, thanks for leaving your thoughts!
Thank you freind,there are many gadgete there but it seems that the gadgets are all writen with java script which is not encouraged when it comes to SEO.thanks any way
@alex – Hmm…I’ve never had to check that box to get my follow-ups, mostly because I get emailed for everything. I’ll have to look into that, thanks for bringing it to my attention. I’ll get that fixed up for ya.
LiveJournal…hmm…I haven’t taken a look at that site yet…perhaps I will over the weekend.
It’s been so long since I fiddled with my layout on blogger that I didn’t even know they’d made those changes! (Last time I looked, it was a very limited amout of still-termed widgets.) So thanks for the heads up!
I’m also a member on LiveJournal, which has it’s community benefits but is MUCH less user-friendly than Blogger. I’m forced to learn more code for LJ, though I don’t necessarily think that’s a good thing. If I wanted to do things like mess around with code, I’d have paid attention when my dad tried to teach me COBAL [i]years[/i] ago! (Ick, am I dating myself OR WHAT??)
Also, follow up comments are not being emailed to me when I check your little “Notify me when…” box, Wayne. I double-checked my email address, it’s correct. What gives?
@Gary – that’s the beauty of a blog to me. That it’s a personal thing. Sure, there are some really good company blogs out there, but the personal ones show the best personality always.
Honestly, I’m not even sure of the difference. It’s one of those buzz word wars. I think it was google that had to be different and define their widgets as ‘gadgets’, thus the confusion ensues…
Widget?—-Gadget?? see this is what confuses the newbie bloggers to the bloggosphere. In this bloggers old mind, I relate “Widgets” as being for placement on blogs—where as Gadjets are for putting on ones’s social page at “My Space”, or “Yahoo” etc. Most new bloggers, don’t understand that one has a “Blog” (singular), on whichg one “Posts” entries , each entry being a new page to the overall blog. Anyway sorry to go off on a rant about the terminology.
I heartily agree with ya Wayne, a person should be cautious in just how many widgets one throws on one’s blog page.—-but hey its THEY’re page so its has to be what they like.
@Adam – Well, I would say absolutely. Since Google owns BlogSpot or Blogger, whatever you want to call it, and they have an extensive system of Gadgets (widgets, gadgets…all the same thing), it only makes sense that they would bolster their blogger platform with the ability to include all those gadgets.
I see it as one step of many to come that will positively impact the Blogger.com system by increasing the functionality by providing gadgets into the mix. Gadgets can be built by anyone with the expertise to do so, and Google provides an extensive amount of documentation on building them as well. I’m working on a few right now to cut my teeth on building them.
My guess is that they are hoping to increase their Gadget market, make it as easy as pie for many people to build gadgets, and then submit into their directory. That means that all these developers making widgets (sorry…gadgets…) and subsequently uploading into their system allows them to sit back and simply watch the gadget base grow and grow while developers around the world build new gadgets for them.
So, long and short of it, yes, they HAVE to do this to compete with WP. I think we may see some more themes come out from there too some day.
I will have to update my travel blog, and check out these gadgets Wayne. Do you think they are trying to compete with WP with all the gadgets and what not?
@Karen – Indeed, I would suspect so. And any one gadget could probably be found in multiple categories.
Email me and let me know what you having issue with if you want to pursue it more. Being the top commenter has it’s perks, no?
A lot of the gadgets are reapeats of themselves in the lists they have. You can scroll through and there are like ten Picasso art of the day gadgets. As for the item I emailed you about, I’m having no luck, I will probably end up having to have someone do it for me. Thanks for the info!