Here are some widgets (third party page elements) which you can add to your New Blogger (widgety Blogger Beta) blog through their "Add Page Element" feature without having to know any HTML coding or to delve into the nuts and bolts of your blog template.

How? Just click the "Add to Blogger" button below for the widget you want (and here's what to do after clicking the button, step by step, for beginners).

Note, if you want to go back from the Blogger "Add page element" page and it won't let you, click the down arrow by the Back button on your browser and choose the URL of this page from the dropdown.

These widgets are for blogs using Layouts on the now feature complete fancy New Blogger, formerly known as Blogger Beta. As with most widgets Javascript needs to be turned on in a visitor's browser for the widget to work (how to enable Javascript). Most of them won't work for "Old Blogger" blogs which use the "classic" templates e.g. FTP blogs, but some have instructions fo "old" blogs.

(Produced as people can now make and share their own widgets to enable bloggers to easily add third party widgets to their blog layouts with a few clicks without having to know any coding, e.g. the Bluepulse widget. Stored here because Blogger is still messing up the code on publishing, when the forms are within a Blogger post and you use Compose mode at any time. Brought to you by the Magical Sheep team, Kirk and Improbulus.)

I've divided these widgets into:

• widgets for Technorati
• other widgets by Kirk
• other useful widgets I've come across (suggestions are welcome, please add a comment to my blog - all contributors will be credited).

A. New Blogger Widgets for Technorati

1. Technorati Blog Top Tags tagcloud widget

Tag cloud showing the top 20 tags you've used on your blog which have been picked up by blogosphere search engine Technorati. (What are tags? and what are tagclouds?)

For more info on this widget and possible problems (e.g. they don't in fact always pick up all tags), see this post (and the Technorati tools page and Technorati blog post).

<b:includable id='main'>&lt;div id='technoratiTagcloud'&gt;&lt;/div&gt; &lt;script src='http://widgets.technorati.com/t.js' type='text/javascript'&gt;&lt;/script&gt;&lt;script type='text/javascript' &gt;techTagcloud = document.getElementById('technoratiTagcloud');blogHome = '&lt;data:blog.homepageUrl/&gt;'; a = document.createElement('a'); a.href='http://technorati.com/blogs/' + blogHome.replace('index.html','') + '?sub=tr_tagcloud_t_ns';a.className = 'tr_tagcloud_t_js';a.style.color = '#4261DF';img = document.createElement('img');img.src = 'http://static.technorati.com/pix/icn-talkbubble.gif';img.alt = 'Technorati icon';ttc = document.createTextNode('&lt;data:content/&gt;');a.appendChild(img);a.appendChild(ttc);techTagcloud.appendChild(a);&lt;/script&gt;&lt;b:include name='quickedit'/&gt;</b:includable>

Example: View cloud

2. Technorati Blog Authority widget

Badge showing your blog's "authority" as noted by blogosphere search engine Technorati.

"Authority" is the number of blogs indexed by Technorati which have linked to your blog's URL (any posts) in the last 180 days, so the bigger the number the better your authority.

For more info on "authority" and this widget, see this post (and the Technorati tools page plus this intro and further explanation from the Technorati blog - authority is the third number they give in their count example).

<b:includable id='main'><div id='technoratiAuthority'></div> <script src='http://widgets.technorati.com/t.js' type='text/javascript'></script> <script type='text/javascript' >techAuth = document.getElementById('technoratiAuthority');blogHome = '<data:blog.homepageUrl/>'; a = document.createElement('a'); a.href='http://technorati.com/blogs/' + blogHome.replace('index.html','') + '?sub=tr_authority_t_ns';a.className = 'tr_authority_t_js';a.style.color = '#4261DF';img = document.createElement('img');img.src = 'http://static.technorati.com/pix/icn-talkbubble.gif';img.alt = 'Technorati icon';tt = document.createTextNode('<data:content/>');a.appendChild(img);a.appendChild(tt);techAuth.appendChild(a);</script><b:include name='quickedit'/></b:includable>

Example:

3. Technorati Link Count widget

Shows how many blogs have linked to a particular post's URL in the last 180 days (as recorded in Technorati's index).

NB. the button below is designed to produce a Technorati link counter widget which gives you the link count of each individual post, rather than your blog as a whole, so after adding it you should drag it to the post bit in Layouts e.g. the bottom of the post.

For more info, see this post (and Technorati's link count page, blog intro and David Sifry's blog).

<b:includable id='main'><b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == "item"'><a expr:href='"http://www.technorati.com/search/" + data:blog.url + "?sub=nscosmos"'> <img alt='Technorati icon' src='http://static.technorati.com/pix/icn-talkbubble.gif'/><data:content/></a><b:include name='quickedit'/></b:if></b:includable>

Example (for my intro to Technorati tags post): View blog reactions

B. New Blogger Widgets by Kirk

1. Picasa Web Albums widget

Display all your public Picasa Web Albums or pics from just one album, or even images recently uploaded to your Blogger blog (now that Blogger is more integrated with Picasa):

• Explanation (best to read this first)

• Widget customiser and creator (you need to choose your options on that page, then you'll get an "Add to Blogger" option).

Example:

2. New Blogger Label Cloud (or tag cloud)

This isn't a "one-click add" widget, but it's a great add-on and hugely popular with New Blogger bloggers, so worth listing here.

• Explanation and user comments

• Instructions for setting up Blogger Label Cloud.

Example (screenshot only, for a live example see the sidebar of Kirk's blog):

3. New Blogger Archive Calendar

Another one which isn't a "one-click add" widget, but a great add-on.

• Explanation and user comments - and May 2007 update info

• Instructions for setting up Blogger Archive Calendar (also in Português by Ricardo Santos; and Tamil by Deepa).

Example (screenshot only, for a live example see the sidebar of Kirk's blog):

C. Other New Blogger Widgets

Suggestions for this section welcome, please add a comment to my blog - all contributors will be credited.

1. Popular Posts or Top Posts widget

Gene Kavner has produced the Affiliate Brand Blog Window Widget.

This shows your blog's most popular posts, and provides analytics and statistics on visitor traffic to your blog. Works for New Blogger, Old Blogger, any blogs that can accept some script being added to the template.

I don't use it myself because from testing I found that if the Affiliate Brand site is slow or down it slows down the loading of my blog, plus I couldn't customise it fully enough to match my blog colour scheme properly, at least in the earlier versions of the widget (I've not tried again recently). But I know bloggers want this sort of thing so I'm listing it here.

See Webweaversworld for customisation instructions.

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Last updated 25 August 2007