I wrote a post on my blog few weeks ago about some ugly widgets that bloggers should most definitely avoid. I will post a short version here and you can read the complete article on my blog with images. ----------------------------------- 5 Common Widgets That Make Your Blog Look Ugly No site can be very successful without good traffic but getting traffic to your site or blog is very difficult. Traffic does not only depend on the content of the blog but also on the site or blog layout. Readers do not like to stay at a site for very long if they are not pleased with the layout. The exception is when the content is so good that the reader would be willing to ignore the layout. But that is a very rare case. I am going to ignore websites now and speak only about blogs. You would have noticed that lately there have been a lot of widgets popping up on different blogs. Some of them are quite good and useful while others are simply trash and ugly. You may have even used these latter types of widgets on your blog just to cover up some empty space but instead made your blog look congested and highly unattractive. Here is a list of Top 5 common widgets that you should avoid: Recent Visitors Chat Box FEEDJIT - Live Traffic News from the blogosphere Technorati - How much is your blog worth? Comments and Suggestions highly appreciated. Thank you.
Yeah, i learned along time ago to remove the feedjit, tecnocrappi, and the how much my blog is not worth. Great thread.
@makethatdollar - thanks for the comment - glad you liked it @SFOD - these widgets only waste space and nothing else...thanks for appreciating.
Basically having too much widgets ruins your blog. Doesn't matter which one you use. I hate blogs with a bigger sidebar than the post area. But yes, for the reason you mentioned, I don't have those widgets on my blog.
I 100% Agree with you. I tried them and they look atrocious. I hate blogs with cluttered widgets that are more bigger then the actual posts themselves.
Most widgets can be nicely integrated with the blog if they can be well manipulated, however I do agree that most widgets or should I say more widgets makes a blog look ugly in a way.
the recent visitors is a great plugin to have ....the new users will know that your blog has traffic commin in and is being viewed ...
That is a good list and I agree with all of them. I still don't get why you would have a chat box on a blog.....
i know...what's the point of having a chat box??? just leave your email id and then have a conversation through emails or something.
My top 2 from your list would be RecentVisitors and News form blogosphere as they NEVER fit the blog layout and make blog look ugly - in fact for me site with those plugins always look lame and turns on noob alert in my head, that's not to say that newbie blogs are whatever, but you get the point it doesn't look very proffessional at all. Worst of all those plugins provide none value to the reader but take a lot of space. Maybe they souldn't be called plugins but space wasters or something?
what's the point of having recent visitors? it takes so much space and is useless...there is no point in showing it to others...just use Google Analytics for your own use.
well i guess it depends on the blog that you have.my blog is related to design. and i have long sidebar.maybe my blog widget will fit in there for a while
Well written post...Seriously people need to understand what widget they need..i also dont see any fun in showing # Recent Visitors # Chat Box # FEEDJIT - Live Traffic
IF you are looking for better widgets try : SHOW 10 RECENT POSTS FOR BLOGGER HOSTED BLOGSPOT BLOGS SCRIPT FOR SCROLLING RECENT POSTS SCRIPT FOR ADDING MORE THEN 5 COMMENTS TO TEMPLATE SIDEBAR SIDEBAR RELATED POSTS BY CATEGORY IN BLOGGER LINK FOR THESE BLOGGER HACKS
yea using technorati widgets for site visitor is just useless and feedjit. however sometimes using recent visitors widgets is a good practice for making users interest in ur site