I was not so familiar with the concept of widgets until I started this blog. Fairly early on, I wondered how people got statistical information onto their sites, because I’d heard some people mention things such as how many people had visited their site, what specific posts were more popular, from what site the reader was referred to their own site etc. This intrigued me and so I managed to install a plugin (Site Stats) on to my blog, which allows me to see how many people visit my site/blog. I also installed a plugin (Akismet Stats) that cleverly filters out anything that looks like spam (usually any comments that include more than one website link), so I do not need to keep monitoring any comments displayed on my blog.

I need to mention a point that as my blog is not on Blogger, I cannot use the ‘gadgets’ available there. So I need to use the plugins/widgets available to me for my ‘WordPress’ blog. The upside is that there are del.icio.us related widgets to use. I installed the widget, which was very simple to do. But to activate it was tricky at first, as I needed to go through the process of inputting a code into the widgets editor, in the specific place where I wanted the widget to be. But after some faffing around, I got it working so that readers can now bookmark any particular post on blog, when on full text version, not the summary page. Haven’t quite worked that out yet.

Also, I found a decent number of plugins available related to Flickr and opted for the ‘Flickr Photo Album’ widget. Unfortunately, I this widget was way too complex for me to apply successfully. It involved API keys and modifying the CSS of this particular widget. After almost an hour of problem-solving I did get the widget to work. However in the end the best I could do was put up a flickr photo album on my blog page, but the photos were not displayed properly on the side. Instead photos displayed in a way that they overlapped with other templates on the blog. I figured out that it wasn’t a problem with the widget but with the blog theme that I have. It does not look like it supports this kind of plugin/widget, which is a real shame.

Here is how it looked on my blog:

This is why I mentioned in an earlier blog that Blogger would be easier to use overall, but I wanted something a little more challenging (and I haven’t given up!). As the blogging experience itself has been a big learning experience for me along the way.

Thing 22 asks to add my delicious bookmarks to my iGoogle page. That was very simple to do, as I already have a google id and only needed to add a gadget. I opted for the recommended one “My del.icio.us” as it had a really good rating. After adding my username to the edit settings option, I was all set and done. As I am already happy with the idea of having an iGoogle page, I think having the most recent bookmarks there is a great idea. Who needs Twitter eh. Ok lets not start that again haha!

Wowww, 22 down, 1 to go!!