Harlan Editorial

Widgets put the fun into the functionality of a blog. 

I’ve been having fun with my small business blog today. Widgets — all those cool things you see in the sidebars of blogs — are seemingly in endless and in endlessly new supply.

I added one, a tag cloud, which you’ll see at your right. It’s much more fun than a prioritized list of categories, I think. (I left the categories in on the left, though, just to help slake the thirst and need of the more buttoned-down client. There’s bandwidth for all on the Web!)

I’ll put the calendar back up tomorrow. That’s a widget that used to live where the tag cloud is today. I moved a few of the other widgets around, lowered the search bar and raised the blogroll. Other widgets I’ve been exploring that might be appealing to you include links, contacts, forms, videos, photos, weather, and so much more! I bet you can find a widget to do almost anything you want for that sidebar of yours.

It’s easy to add one, too. It’s a matter of downloading it, uploading it onto your host, and clicking it to activate. It’s that easy in my software, Wordpress, anyway. And I don’t think it’s a gamble to bet that it’s easy in other blog software products, too. Most of the software is designed with non-techies in mind. That’s one of the aspects that makes blogging so enticing for content producers and small business entrepreneurs; it’s an end-run around the need for a full-time techie to be involved in the day-to-day upload process. Saves the techie budget for the big stuff.

Tags: Blogging, Functionality, Small Business //