widgets Archives - Fairy Blog Mother

Don’t get stuck in default

Posted on Wednesday 4 July 2012 by Alice • 0 Comments

Click my logo to ask me a question!

When WordPress is first uploaded, either by WordPress for the .com version, or by you for a .org blog, you will be issued with the default theme.

This is generally the Twenty Ten theme, which actually is a very good basic theme to start with, as it has many adaptable features to make it look better.

It has a nice big banner, to which you can easily upload one with your corporate design, with a navigation bar under it, a single sidebar on the right with plenty of widgets to occupy it, and plenty of space for your posts.

But the trouble is, being the default theme, leaving it unaltered does shout out that you don’t know what you’re doing with your blog.

And since blog design is important if you want to give a good impression to your readers, and especially as it’s very easy to change your theme, it’s not a good thing to leave it in the same state as when it was created.

Here’s a blog I recently had fun changing its theme:

As it is a WordPress.com blog, I didn’t have to do much to the theme, just to add in the banner and put some widgets into the sidebar and footer space.

WordPress.com has over 120 themes available to download, and if you host your own blog with WordPress.org then there’s literally thousands! Most of them are free and very easy to upload and activate, and if you are blessed with knowing HTML and PHP, then the world is your oyster!

For WordPress.com users, just go to ‘Appearance’ in the left sidebar, and click on ‘Themes’, and wade through the examples until you find one you like. Selecting is made simpler by using the filter system. There is also a mechanism for previewing what your blog would look like before you ‘activate’ your chosen theme.

Then once in place you check what options are available to you under ‘Appearance’, such as the ‘Header’ and ‘Background’ links, and experiment to create your desired effect.

Populate your sidebars with appropriate widgets, upload a picture of yourself and add it to the ‘Gravatar’ widget to show off the blog’s author, and then get blogging!

And if you want to have me change your blog’s theme and enhance it with some well placed widgets, then you only have to ask (click on my logo to send me an email).

Filed Under: blogs and blogging, design makes a difference, Free Wordpress blogs, Self-hosted Wordpress blogs

Magic Moments: Restricted use of HTML

Posted on Wednesday 30 May 2012 by Alice • 0 Comments

Click my logo to ask me a question!

One of the differences between WordPress.com and .org is what you can or can’t do with HTML and widgets.

refers to .com blog

Widgets are small pieces of programming or applications that are designed to be placed in the sidebars. WordPress.com provides a very good selection for you to use, all perfectly satisfactory for creating a basic blog. But these do have some restrictions for what you can do with them, and placing HTML that hasn’t been approved by WordPress in the text widgets is one of them.

This has caused many disgruntled bloggers to come to me to say “it’s not working properly!” They see the wonderful results of HTML that does work on WordPress.org blogs, and when they try to produce the same results they are bitterly disappointed.

You can’t expect all the singing-and-dancing benefits from WordPress.org on your .com blog if you are not playing for it. Be grateful that you get Akismet for free, and accept that the Twitter Badges’ code cannot be placed into the text widgets and allowed to work, likewise with videos and podcasts placed inside posts (this facility has been withdrawn as a result of the most recent WordPress.com redesign).

But certain widgets have been created as compensation. It used to be almost impossible to place an image within a text widget, because it required simple HTML. Now there is an Image widget that allows you to upload the URL of a previously uploaded image from the media gallery, and everything is done for you, including title, alt tags, caption, alignment, dimensions and a link to elsewhere, all perfect for enhancing your SEO.

There is a Facebook Like Box widget that connects with your Facebook Page and a link to the page and how many have ‘liked’ it. You have the choice of showing some examples of your fans’ avatars, your profile stream or your Page’s wall activity.

The Follow Blog widget allows your readers to subscribe to your latest posts, instead of having to create a Feedburner RSS feed and placing the code in a text widget (although this HTML is generally allowed). You can change the wording and call to action within the sign up box without having to worry about HTML.

And even if you can’t place a Twitter Badge on your WordPress.com blog, the Twitter widget that displays your latest tweets is a very good substitute, accompanied by a good choice of beneficial add-ons.

I’m amazed at what you can do to optimise your WordPress.com blog. But – if you still hanker after all the other gimzos that you see on other blogs, then you will have to take the leap and transfer your posts and pages onto a WordPress.org blog, and then the world will be your oyster!

Filed Under: Blogging help, blogs and blogging, Free Wordpress blogs, non-jargon

Sidebar imagery sets blogs apart

Posted on Thursday 8 September 2011 by Alice • 0 Comments

Click my logo to ask me a question!

There is a design agency I keep an eye on. I like them because they are distinctly visual (I suppose design agencies are supposed to be), but it is the myriad of colours and the way they use images that attracts my attention.

This is not confined to just their graphics on paper, but online too. Their style is distinctive, and may not suit everybody, but simplicity combined with complexity is tastefully intertwined, and they have found a way to put this concept onto their websites and blogs they also design for.

If you are into NLP, you will know that people understand and process things in different ways. Some respond visually, others to words and the rest to sounds. A blog can use all these to put its messages across. By using all of these media, there is a better chance of capturing the attention of more potential followers and customers.

A WordPress.org blogsite allows you to do virtually anything you like on your sidebars. You could go down the usual route and add in conventional widgets which are mainly text-based, or you could go out on a limb and create linked images. This is particularly apt if your main subject lends itself to a visual presence, and each image is specifically designed to look ‘clickable’ (three-dimensional, enticing and understandable), so your visitors could end up have far more fun exploring your site than an ordinary blog. After all, isn’t that what you want them to do?

Having images on your sidebars linking to various areas of your website should be in addition to the navigation bar, because there will always be people who prefer using that method to enter a site (reference NLP) and won’t understand the concept of clickable pictures. Don’t discriminate people who are wired differently from you, they all have to be accommodated if you are going to make your website succeed.

Filed Under: blogs and blogging, design makes a difference, increasing business visibility, Self-hosted Wordpress blogs

Make it easy for your readers to take action

Posted on Thursday 25 August 2011 by Alice • 0 Comments

Click my logo to ask me a question!

The whole point of a blog is that it enables your readers to interact with you. That is the beauty of Web2.0, and sets it apart from static websites that just sit there looking pretty (if you’re lucky) and boring (if you’re complacent).

So to make the experience of visiting your blog exciting for your readers, there are loads of apps and widgets at your disposal to upload and activate, which will keep your visitors really busy!

I don’t expect you to put everything available into your blog, or it will look like a dog’s breakfast and nobody will be able to choose what to do next, and will probably result in them running away! But there are some elements that should be present if you are to maintain the interaction a blog deserves.

One is to encourage some sort of subscription service. There are so many ways of doing this, varying from sophisticated sign up boxes to buttons you press after making a comment. For me it is important to make it very obvious to the reader that you want them to subscribe, and to stage it so they literally fall over the methods for doing so. I have often landed on a really good blog that has interested me, and wanted to keep in touch with the latest posts, only to hunt drastically around the site to look for a method of subscription, even to sign up to a RSS feed.

Of course RSS feeds always don’t fulfill my needs. I hate it when it merely leads to bookmarking the blog from my browser bar – I can’t be bothered to check that every day for new posts. What I am looking for is something that sends the newly-published posts to my in-box or to a reader in my search engine provider. This can be accomplished by creating a RSS URL through Feedburner (or equivalent), or using the various plugins or widgets available from WordPress. Read about one of them here: Don’t leave your WP greet box plugin undone.

Sharing is almost a requisite for blogs, as it has become commonplace to retweet a good post on Twitter or to share it on one of the many social bookmarking sites. This should definitely be encouraged, especially if you want to increase the traffic to your blog or expose it to a larger audience. There are lots of apps available to enable sharing, from individual transactions to collective mechanisms that allow the reader a choice in wherever he wants to promote your post. Even WordPress.com have a simple version: read Sharing is easy on WordPress.com to learn more.

These are just two interactive activities you could place on your blog, and there are many more to choose from which can enhance your blog’s performance and increase its interest factor. Just examine the widgets available for WordPress.com, and check out the myriad of plugins available for WordPress.org, and do a bit of experimenting. If you don’t know what to expect, take a look at other blogs you admire to find out what they have to offer, and then see if you can find a way of emulating the same functions that take your fancy or stimulate you to take action!

Filed Under: blogs and blogging, Free Wordpress blogs, increasing business visibility, other social media, Self-hosted Wordpress blogs, social networking

Which is better, left or right?

Posted on Monday 17 January 2011 by Alice • 0 Comments

Fairy Blog Mother

I spent most of last Saturday messing about with a new theme for this blog. I wanted to see what it would be like to have the two sidebars on the left rather than on the right.

So I found a suitable theme (there aren’t many around with two left-hand sidebars) and set to work to change it to suit what I wanted. The original was far too thin, with narrow sidebars and an extremely deep banner, not to mention red rather than purple (a mere discrepancy easily overcome). I even redesigned my promotional squares to fit into the most left sidebar and was prepared to rearrange the widgets to fit.

But when I ‘previewed’ the new theme after I had loaded it up into FileZilla, I was disappointed. To me it seemed all wrong for a blog to have its sidebars in the most prominent position, with the posts placed secondary. The posts are the blog, so they should take centre stage, as these are the main thing people want to see and read. They shouldn’t be distracted by the sidebars, even if they are stuffed full of interesting and relevant content (as mine usually are).

So let’s take a look. The first picture is the theme I have at present (January 2011) with the sidebars on the right:

And below it is the alternative theme with its left sidebars:

Looking at it now I could easily reduce the depth of the banner and even swap over the image and words to reflect the repositioning of the sidebars, but I’m still not sure whether that would make it better.

The reason for my dilemma is that blogging gurus declare how much more appropriate it is to have your sidebars on the left, especially if they contain call to actions such as subscription sign up forms and links to relevant information elsewhere (both inside the site or externally).

If your blog, website or blogsite has been created purely as a medium to promote the content of your sidebars, then yes I would agree. But an ordinary blog should concentrate solely on its posts, as that is what blogging is all about, communicating the written word to its audience without distractions and superfluous material getting in the way.

What do you think about this? Let me know through the comment box below –

Filed Under: blogs and blogging, design makes a difference, Self-hosted Wordpress blogs

Why images enhance blog design

Posted on Thursday 21 October 2010 by Alice • 2 Comments

Fairy Blog Mother

For me, a blog’s design is enhanced by images. It is the quality and the positioning of these images that defines its individuality, presentation and personality. I am very keen to use imagery within my blog design, but the problem is they cannot be changed instantly or by my clients.

If a certain image needs to be adapted, I will gladly do it, as I have the required software to accomplish this. I actively encourage my clients to amend and publish their own content (particularly the blog post page), as WordPress is so easy to use, but they forget that images are static and cannot be changed by themselves through programming or CMS. I do not consider this a defect; if I left my clients to their own devices these carefully crafted images would soon start to look unrecognisable…

In my eyes, a blog without images is just plain boring. You need words to satisfy those who aren’t visually inclined, but I think enhancement via images is just as important as relevant and scintillating content. They can compliment each other too, and add to the explanation factor, another side to the argument, an alternative point of view.

Of course, the most obvious place for an image is the banner across the top (that is, if your theme allows this), but failing that, a simple picture of the author in the sidebar is better than nothing – at least the readers will have someone to focus on when they read the posts, as matching up the writing style with the mug-shot is always interesting.

And the remainder of the images? There’s the sidebars, empty spaces often misunderstood and neglected, which could be cluttered up with widgets, feeds and other links, or could be entertainingly stuffed full of relevant images linking to social networking profiles, other pages within the blog, and external resources relevant to the blog’s content.

So, when I’ve got time, I’ll be rethinking about my sidebars and how I can create a myriad of images to increase the entertainment value of this blog… wait and see!

Filed Under: design makes a difference, Free Wordpress blogs, Self-hosted Wordpress blogs

10 things a blogging mentoring service should provide

Posted on Tuesday 6 July 2010 by Alice • 2 Comments

Fairy Blog Mother

I keep an eye on many LinkedIn Groups, especially those about blogging, and one post caught my eye. It was from someone who wanted to know about forming a blogging mentoring service, and being the altruistic kind of person I am, I gave him my 10 opinions of what a blogging mentoring service should provide:

1. You need to be aware of business’s blogging needs; this includes explaining how blogging can benefit a business, small or large, to increase its online visibility and its audience on the net;

2. You need to research into why people have blogs (or don’t have blogs); blogs are created for a myriad of uses, business and personal, and therefore have very different styles – alternatively there may be many potential bloggers who need encouragement to start one;

3. You need to understand what blogs are used for, and whether they are used properly; similarly to above, blogs fall under many categories, but you need to understand their purposes to advise on the best practices;

4. You need to explain blogs need to be regularly updated, and to find out whether help is required with writing posts; blogs aren’t really blogs without consistent new material, so ideas for post subjects and writing styles are usually welcome;

5. You need to find out whether bloggers fully understand SEO and explain how keywords can help their blogs; this subject, once properly aired, stimulate a vast change in a blog’s performance towards its success;

6. You need to check whether they have they fully optimised sidebars; so many blogs have neglected sidebars and don’t use their widgets adequately, mainly because they don’t understand or appreciate their functions;

7. You need to advise on which plugins they need; for WordPress.org blogs these applications help enhance the blog’s performance to further it towards popularity and success;

8. You need to talk about integrating their blog’s design with their website or corporate image; using the myriad of themes available, some of which can be adapted or redesigned to match an existing style or personality through specialised blog designers (the Fairy Blog Mother is one);

9. You need to show how to get RSS and see if is it being used to its full extent; once acquired, the online world is opened up to automation of post publishing, feeding to social media and other related websites, and visibly interactive headline links;

10. You need to explain how to integrate blogs with social media; related to above, your blog should be the hub of your social networking strategy, fully optimised to interact with your audience, and present and potential customers.

I’m sure there are many more things I need to include (and if you know them, tell me in the comment box below). But in the meantime these 10 will have to do.

Fairy Blog Mother aims to offer much of this advice in this blog, and eventually through her book which she plans to publish in the future. She benefits from people asking her questions, especially specific things you would like to know about blogging and particularly from blogging beginners who may have a selection of questions they are too embarrassed to ask elsewhere.

I plan to change my style in future posts to a more advisory nature, in concise, focused subjects, and if the subject is large, to break it down into smaller posts for easier understanding. The Fairy Blog Mother was formed to explain blogging in easy to understand, visual e-courses, using non-jargon and everyday language, step-by-step with no assumptions that the reader understands technical blogging requirements. She doesn’t mean to be condescending, just informative and educational.

So, what questions about blogging do you have?

Filed Under: blogs and blogging, design makes a difference, Free Wordpress blogs, increasing business visibility, online marketing, Self-hosted Wordpress blogs, social networking

How to put a Twitter badge on your blog

Posted on Friday 16 April 2010 by Alice • 4 Comments

Fairy Blog Mother

Look down my sidebar and you’ll see a large purple box, or badge, that shows my latest Twitter updates.

Today I’ll show you how to put one up on your WordPress.org blog. This is, unfortunately, not possible on your WordPress.com blog as it requires HTML script, but there is a widget available that will show the RSS feed of your Twitter stream. You can view how to install that from my ‘What and how to use widgets’ e-course.

Update for 15 April 2011: A new version of Twitter is out, so a revised version of this post has been written. It covers how to create a Twitter badge, but not how to put it into your blog – rejoin this post when you are ready to do that procedure.

First, go to your Twitter profile:

and pan down to the bottom links:

Click on the link ‘Goodies’:

And click on ‘Widgets’:

And choose ‘My Website’:

And click on ‘Profile Widget’:

Fill in your Twitter username in the field, and then select ‘Preferences’:

Tick the boxes you require (I’ve selected scroll bar, show 5 tweets, and confirmed the timestamps and hashtags), and then select ‘Appearance’:

Here I chose the colours I wanted to dress my badge up in. You can choose from the selection offered to you (click on the coloured squares and a pop up box with a selection will appear), or if you know the hex code of your colours like I do (#800080 is that magenta colour) fill those in the appropriate field in the pop up box. Have a play until you get what you like (it will show up in the example on the right, or click the ‘Test settings’ button at the bottom to view). Next click on ‘Dimensions’:

If you know your sidebar’s dimensions in pixels (!), put that in. My guess at 200 width was fine. The length is up to you, but I didn’t want my badge to dominate my sidebar, so I made it just a little bit longer at 250. The scroll-bar allowed the bottom tweets to be seen. There’s always the auto-width box to tick if you wish.

Now click on the ‘Finish and Grab Code’ button:

Highlight and copy the code. Now open your blog in another window and go to the dashboard:

Select ‘Widgets’ under ‘Appearances’:

Find and drag a text widget into your desired space on your sidebar. When it opens, past the badge’s code into it:

Don’t forget to click the ‘Save’ button. Now you can go to your blog through the ‘View Site’ button at the top and look at your brand new badge in your sidebar:

Hope you like it! Keep popping back to check it works – it’s so much fun seeing your latest Tweets appear as if by magic!

Filed Under: blogs and blogging, design makes a difference, other social media, Self-hosted Wordpress blogs

com versus org: which WordPress to use

Posted on Monday 12 April 2010 by Alice • 13 Comments

Both kinds of blog

WordPress is an extremely powerful yet very easy to manage blogging platform, or as Wikipedia describes it: “an open source blog publishing application powered by PHP and MySQL which can also be used for content management”. It is offered to the public in two forms.

First, there is the ‘free’ version (WordPress.com), where you don’t have to pay anything to set it up (very useful for blogging beginners), and there is the ‘self hosted’ version (WordPress.org), where you use your own host and domain name, with WordPress providing the software and accompanying applications (but you do need a certain amount of technical know-how to set it up).

free blogging platform

WordPress.com (‘free’) has many benefits. It is an excellent platform to learn how to blog. It is designed for the beginner or those with restricted budgets to get into the blogging world. It can be created in a matter of minutes with very limited technicalities, and everything is updated to the latest version automatically. WordPress provide a good selection of widgets (blogging features) and themes (templates), and the methods of creating and updating your blog have been made as easy as possible.

The disadvantages are that this kind of blog cannot be monetized. With strict blog police WordPress has the power to shut down your blog at any time. You lose control over your domain name as WordPress is always part of it. There are also restrictions on what you can put in your sidebar, as only certain HTML scripts are accepted; no sign-up forms, affiliate links or similar functions are possible. Other social media providers have recognized this, such as Feedburner, and alternative arrangements are offered.

self-hosted blogging platform

But once you’ve used the ‘free’ version for a while, and have got used to how WordPress works, then you can move on to the ‘self-hosted’ version. If you are not technically minded (understand the basics of HTML and PHP), or don’t have the patience to find out how, it would be wise to get someone to create this kind of blog for you. I spent many hours screaming at my computer while I was learning how to set up WordPress.org; it is by no means as easy as the ‘free’ alternative.

It does have many advantages. You can use your own domain name, so your blog can become a ‘blogsite’, with the pages performing as a website, but with far more search engine power. There are a variety of hosts who are compatible with WordPress, and my advice would be to use those who offer the ‘one click’ system through ‘Fantastico’. It will save you plenty of heart-ache and angst as much of the hard work is done for you automatically.

FileZilla

You can manage your blog through an FTP system (I use FileZilla) so you can upload themes, plug-ins and pictures. There are plenty of extra applications you could include on your blog, obtainable from WordPress for free, all designed to help with maximizing the performance of your blog and its relation to social media, plus thousands of different kinds of themes (templates) to choose from, both free and paid for.

The sidebars can accept most programming languages, so they can be easily monetized. You can put in social networking badges, picture links, sign-up forms, RSS feeds to Twitter and other blogs, affiliate links, advertisements, and much more besides. There is a huge quantity of plug-ins available to download from WordPress that will help enhance your blog. You can also change many features of your themes, to rearrange how your blog looks to match your corporate image or preferred style.

So which one is best? It depends what you want your blog for: just somewhere to post your thoughts and aspirations, or a powerful alternative to a website with an integrated content management system, search engine compatibility and many other features to blast your way through the web. Both will raise your profile, expose your expertise and, with longevity and consistent content, will gain high status in the search engines; both will look good, perform well and satisfy your blogging needs; and, depending on your blogging past history, one will be the right one for you at this time.

Filed Under: blogs and blogging, Free Wordpress blogs, increasing business visibility, online marketing, Self-hosted Wordpress blogs

What do widgets do on your blog?

Posted on Thursday 14 January 2010 by Alice • 0 Comments

Fairy Blog Mother

I’ve just uploaded my free e-course ‘What and how to use widgets’ which explains what widgets are, what they are for and how to put them on your blog.

So what are widgets? Well, look at your sidebar and see all the various elements that are situated there. These are widgets, individual applications or programme processes that allow you to put up a picture, add in a subscription form, show which pages and posts I have written, list my comments, show feeds to my social media and many other things.

Both kinds of blog

Usually you mention the word ‘widget’ and the uninitiated will wince and look worried, but really it is very easy to cope with widgets once you understand them, and that is exactly what my free widget e-course does.

I have seen many blogs, not even new ones, who have not fully taken on what their widgets can do for them. To me, to see an unpopulated sidebar missing vital elements that enhance a blog as regards search engine optimisation (SEO), allowing readers to find past posts and participate in comments, even to realise there are other pages to be read, is a wasted opportunity.

The widgets that are really needed are:

a method for your reader to subscribe to your blog (either a sign up form for emails or chicklit logo to subscribe to a Google reader)
show which posts you have written recently
show the comments people have left
show your categories (topics)
show your tags (keywords)
show your links to other websites or blogs you recommend reading
how to access your blog

And then there are widgets to make your blog more usable for both your readers and the search engine spiders:

access to other pages
links to your social media profiles
RSS feeds to your Twitter stream, other blogs, delicious or other social networks
see who has visited recently
pictures, either on their own or as links to elsewhere
archive details
search mechanisms

If you have a WordPress.com blog, widgets are already available to you (dependent upon which theme you have chosen). If you’ve used WordPress.org to create your blog then some widgets will need to be added via plug-ins, of which there are many thousands to choose from, including the option to retweet posts you want to recommend and share the post with other social networking sites.

Find out how to add widgets to your blog, or just brush up on the ones you haven’t used yet – the widget world is really worth exploring!

Filed Under: blogs and blogging, Free Wordpress blogs

Tag Archives: widgets