Thinking of adding a widget to your blog? Don't know what a widget is? Okay, neither did I. Let me show you what I learned.
In a previous post, I mentioned that I added a widget to my blog here on ActiveRain. I got the idea while reading an article by Craig Rutman. He had a box on the right side of his blog that had links to searches in his home area. I thought it was cool and wanted to do the same for myself in Placerville, Ca. I wanted to copy the box and paste it but it is no longer there; hope that Craig isn't mad at me for learning cool stuff from him.
Anyway, this nice woman named Constina Baylor, who in a round-about way, I promised to do a post explaining how I did this. Maybe you can get something out of this too.
First, you need to go to Widgetbox and sign up, it takes about a minute. After doing this you will go to the main page and see this. Click on the Widgets button, marked in the photo.
There are hundreds of choices for widgets here to choose from. For demonstration, let's click on the Twitter button.
This Window will appear, click on the basic option, it is free to users. you can upgrade to Pro if you like in the future. Type in the user name for your Twitter account - mine is Tromler.
Customize content!
Fill in the editor as you wish, your choices will change the box to the right to show how it will look when completed. Some options are not available to the basic users. That's cool, there are plenty of options.
Design Look and Feel!
You can customize the size, theme color, and the changes will appear to the right.
Edit Gallery Details!
Now you can add Tags, Descriptions, add photos, etc.
Again, the changes will appear on the right side box as you make changes.
When you have completed all your options - SAVE YOUR WORK!
After saving, you will be flashed to the top of the page to "Agree with the terms". Click the box, if you agree, than click the SAVE button again.
This window will appear on the screen next. You can still make changes to your widget here. You have already saved the file, but you can now make changes and save these also. I did not do that here. I clicked on the "Get Widget" button.
I had a problem here, I could not get the Javascript code to work for me. It had something to do with the settings I think. I clicked on the Flash tab, then the copy button. Now I'm ready to put the widget on my blog. (Also known as embedding code)
Now, go over to your Home page. and on the left side click on Settings.
Once you've clicked on Settings, we can edit our Blog Settings. You window may look something like this.
Under the Blog Setting Title, we want to work within the Blog Description box. This is where we will be putting the widget code that we saved earlier. (See picture above)
For ease, scroll down to the bottom of the Blog Description box and add the html code that you saved earlier. If you clicked on the copy button earlier, you should be able to right-click in the box and paste.
Once you've pasted the html code into the Blog Description, click on the update button to save the change.
Now we can see what this new widget will look like in our blog.
Go to your blog by clicking My Blog on the left hand side.
Once you get to your blog, scroll down to see what the new widget looks like. It will be on the right hand side - this picture shows what this new widget looks like when I scroll down my blog.
Don't like what you see? You can always change it. By going back to Widgetbox, you can change size, color, image, etc. and embed a new code like we've done here.
You can also create something completely different as a widget. Go back to the main page at Widgetbox, and look around, experiment with some new things there, and save it to your account. Once saved, you can always go back to get the html code to embed in your blog.
Well, I hope this helps explain how to add a widget to your blog. My experience is limited, but I am willing to help if you have any questions. I learn by doing. I help because others have helped me to learn here at ActiveRain.
Enjoy this day!
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