Widgets
Now we’re done with posts (for awhile). Let’s shift our gaze a couple inches to the left; see that area? It’s the sidebar, and it’s more interesting than you think!
The default sidebar has a couple sections underneath the user information area: categories and archives. While this is perfectly functional, you’re welcome to change it up a bit. In your admin area, click on the Presentation tab and then the Widgets subtab.
You’ll be in a page called Sidebar Arrangement, where you’ll see a tall blue box that represents your sidebar. Underneath, you’ll see some other boxes with names like Calendar and Pages. Each of these little boxes represents a Widget, or a little module that you can put in your sidebar to display certain information.
To use a widget, simply drag it into the sidebar area. You’ll notice a little icon at the right of each active box, and you can click on that to adjust the options for each box. You can also drag the widgets around inside the box to rearrange the order.
Most of these widgets are pretty self explanatory, so I’ll save you the descriptions unless you have a specific question. There are two that are pretty intriguing though: Text and RSS.
Text widgets simply create a box for you to type in whatever text you might want to show up in your sidebar. For example, I named my text widget Andy Laub and put a (very) brief blurb in there.
RSS widgets are nearly as simple; they let you paste in an RSS feed from any source to show in your sidebar. Erik’s blog has a great example of this; he brought in the RSS feed from his personal blog!
The other great thing about text and RSS widgets is that you can have as many as you want. Use the form at the bottom of the page to add more.
Dino Corvino said:
You and your widgets.
December 3rd, 2007 at 10:40 pm #