Thursday, October 22, 2009

Does it matter if I use WordPress Widgets?

By Don Beavers

Activating widgets as a tool can permit you to customize your WP blog, produce a more satisfactory user experience, and help you users navigate through your website. Widgets function almost like a plugin but are contrived to provide a much less convoluted method of changing your blogs sidebar content without having to learn any HTML code. Think of widgets as accessories that you can add or take away from your blogs sidebars.

WordPress is the most popular blogging platform in use, partly because of the handiness of widgets and plugins for dead-on target customization. WordPress widgets function together with themes and plugins to release your creativeness and will empower you to take control of your website.

What are these Widgets?

There are three primary components to your blogs WordPress template. These are the theme that you select for appearance, the plugins that will provide particular characteristics to your web log, and widgets that allow you to customize the presentation of your blogs features. We will review each of these components.

WP Themes:

A WP theme gives you absolute mastery over the look and feeling for the presentment of your web log. Look upon the theme as the external skin of your blog. It is the theme that provides your website with its special visual aspect. Choosing a theme that matches the content of your blog can greatly step-up the users comfortableness level when he or she is viewing your site. As a good example, if your blog is about training dogs you should think about using a pet based or a protection grounded theme. The graphics of the new theme will compliment your content. Selecting the proper theme also yields your blog an improved sense of believability. Wordpress themes can be modified in simply a matter of minutes and if you are employing a generic theme you should strongly deliberate upgrading. If you are producing multiple blogs you may profit from purchasing a bulk bundle of quality WordPress themes due to the respectable cost savings.

WordPress Plugins:

A WordPress Plugin permits you to bestow extra characteristics to your blog that will make it a bit more interactive. A plugin is simply a software script that was prepared to serve a bloggers needs. Once it was tested on that other persons blog it was then packaged up for others to also utilize. Nearly all non-commercial plugins are free and can be downloaded from the WordPress website. The most common plugins for WordPress provide tools that bloggers can use for optimizing your blog for search engine ranking (SEO), adding contact forms, placing news feeds on your blog, managing Adsense advertisements, placing affiliate marketing banners and links into your blog, and statistics software packages. There are many thousands of plugins available and they will allow for you to make a popular and interactive web log.

WordPress Widgets:

WordPress Widgets allow for the effortless addition of your design components and your plugins to your WordPress sidebar. This permits you to truly personalize your blog. Employing widgets means that you do not need to translate HTML, PHP, or any other computer code. Widgets are similar to a plugin, but widgets are used by the web log proprietor to format the various components of the blogs content. By going to your WP admin panel, you can click on the widgets tool and you will then be able drag and drop many features directly and instantly into your blog. These include archives, search tools, a list of your most recent posts, a calendar, links to other websites, a tag cloud, recent comments and much more. Using widgets makes personalizing your WordPress blog an easy and simple task.

Why are the blogs sidebars critical?

Sidebars are the narrow columns to the left side or the right side of your blog posts. Themes commonly have at least 1 or 2 sidebars, but can offer 3 or more. Sidebar widgets are the most overlooked, but perhaps also the most powerfull component of WordPress. Simply select the widgets tool to drag and drop features directly into the sidebar area. Sidebars are as well where most of your advertisement takes place, so it is critical to create sidebars with that in memory.

Widgets allow you to easily contribute design components, gismos, tools, videos, and much more to your WordPress blog. They permit you to personalize your blog without having to spend time learning HTML or PHP. Remember to use the widget tool and it will be simple to take control over your blogs appearance.

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