Susie Gardner from Hop Studios gave a pretty good demo of how to add widgets to your blog today at Northern Voice. Widgets, also called plugins or badges, are little apps which consist of bits of code that once added to your blog or website, pull in external information. They usually appear in the sidebar of your blog. These widgets could pull the latest news feed from a site such as Voxant, the latest Dilbert cartoon, a list of books you are reading or meaning to read, the weather, or a series of flickr photos.
These widgets can be a fun way to add content to your website. The only downside of adding these, is that you have to dabble in the code a bit which can be scary at first. Additionally if you’re blog is on a hosted platform such as WordPress.com or Typepad, you may not be able to add these.
So how do you go about adding a widget?
First let’s select a widget. Of all the widgets mentioned during the presentation, I found polldaddy.com the most interesting. As the name would suggest polldaddy allows you to create polls.
First you need to go to their site and sign up for an account. This is done very easily simply by filling your name and email. (Don’t you love people who don’t ask you for every possible detail?)
Next, hit create a poll.
Type in your questions.
Type in your answers,
Select the “look” of your poll.
Hit save and Voila!
You will then be sent to a new screen with code which may look scary, but here’s the catch. You don’t need to know how it works. Just copy and paste it. That’s it. And here’s the poll I just created:
Now, for this example, I’ve copied the poll in the body of my text. I don’t really want to clutter my sidebar with more stuff, but if I wanted to, I could have a permanent poll anywhere on my site. The beauty of this widget is that simply by login in to my polldaddy.com account and creating a new poll, the poll on my website is automatically updated.
I mentioned earlier that widgets usually appear in the sidebar of your blog. This is where dabbling in the code gets a bit tricky. If you’ve set up your own blog and have access to the presentation, you can go to the template editor, locate the sidebar.php and add the widget code in there. If you are like me and using WordPress which you’ve downloaded and customized, you can also use the widget editor, but be careful and make sure that you back up all of your files, just in case you mess things up.
I should also point out, that if you copy and paste code into the body of a post, like I just did, save the post and come back and edit it, chances are the code for your widget will need to be updated. The visual editor in WordPress seems to alter the code every time you save and edit. I’m not sure why, but it just does… So just add your code once you are happy with the post and no longer need to edit.
One of the biggest changes that we’ve seen this year is that clients are no longer asking for a static website but instead want to maintain their own site. This has been great, but now I think that we’ll have to change our name to something like WordPressLime Media. The number of WordPress (WP) sites we’re churning out is huge. The exciting thing about working with WP is seeing how far we can push the design. We work with a lot of different graphic designers here and it’s been challenging at times figuring out how we can convert their ideas into WP templates. Here are the latest ones we’ve been working on:
A few weeks ago we asked you to complete our survey and you did. We’re happy to announce that the winner of our survey is Don. Not only did Don fill out our survey but he made us laugh tremendously with his list of suggested topics:
Hot Nerd Girls that take on geek topics
I call it Social Networking / You Call it Stalking
Debbie does Vista but rebounded with Leopard so why does everyone call her a Cougar?
Amy takes calls from Rehab: Was it Ruby on Rails this time?
I’m not sure that we’ll be able to provide you with articles with such flair and panache, but we did gather a lot of useful information and we now have a better idea of who you are and what you want. In 2008 we’ll write more about the following subjects:
examples of our work
website optimization and SEO and traffic building
newsletter tips
social networking
fresh ways to use the web and great examples
html and css examples
news technologies and online tools
book reviews
Almost all of you mentioned that reading about our latest work was what you wanted, so we’ll make sure to cover all of our projects. We’ve also made a few connections last year and invited “experts” in their field to write guest posts. Liz from Market Navigators, has already contributed great marketing articles and copywriter/SEO consultant Louise and Brand Strategist Isabelle will be contributing articles very soon. We hope that with their help, we will be able to provide you with a great list of resource.
A few posts ago I mentioned that business had changed at Bluelime Media. Here’s how. We started working with WordPress almost three years ago now but only sunk our teeth during the later part of this year. I owe it all to Haig Armen and Mark Busse over at Industrial Brand. I met with them back in the summer and we talked about possibly helping them out with some WP build. Mark assumed that the entire Bluelime website was done using WP. Only the Bluelime blog was using WP and at the time I had no idea how the whole site could be built with WP and just dismissed the idea. But I just couldn’t get the idea out of my head and if you’re reading this post from an RSS reader, you may want to check out our site. During the Christmas holiday while you we’re no doubt enjoying the festivities, I worked on setting up the whole site in WP. It was much easier than I thought and the result makes for a website that is much easier to maintain and update.
Of course this would not have been possible withouth the experience that we’ve gained this past few months. Setting up websites using WP just made so much sense. We use to build a lot of customized CMS. We’d set up the database and then build an admin interface, but WordPress just makes all that work disappear. Interestingly enough, WP can be used for sites who don’t even need to look like blogs. Threads Gazette is such a site. When setting up this website, we created a page for the home page, while posts from three different categories make up the content for the showroom, classifieds and events section. The Belvedere Senior Living website was created by setting up various pages, while the news section is the only one that using the “blogging” feature.
The best thing about WordPress is the number of plugins available. Every time myself of Tzaddi have thought, “how can we do this”, a simple search of the codex allowed us to find someone who had the same idea as us. I can’t help but feel a sense of power when working with WP and look forward to continuing building sites using this blogging platform.
We’d like to get to know you better. Who are you, and what brought you here? What keeps you coming back? We’d be so grateful if you would take our quick Readers Survey.
Everyone who completes the survey will be entered to win $100 for:
iTunes
Amazon
A donation to the charity of your choice
So what are you waiting for? Take the survey now. Hurry, the survey ends on December 31.
UPDATE: Thanks to all of our readers who completed the survey. We’ll be announcing the results and winner early January.
We are happy to announce the launch of Mud Creative’s new website. The site is the re-branded website of Louise Desmarais. Following a move from Ontario to Alberta, Sandbox Creative was faced with a dilemma. The name Sandbox Creative was already taken by an advertising company. Using her creative genius, Louise came up with a new name and with the help of Blue Citrus, a new look and feel was designed.
The website was built entirely in WordPress, providing Louise with an easy to use Content Management System. A blog allowing Louise to discuss Search engine optimization and copywriting was also built-in but is not available yet. It should be up and running in a few weeks, so stay tuned.
Things have been very busy at Bluelime Media, which would explain the lack of posting during September. I can’t believe September ended last week! How did that happen?
We’re currently working with UBC Library on the UBC Vault website. Phase 1 has been launched but much more is yet to come. Working with Johnny from Avenue Creative has been delightful. His design skills simply blow me away.
Tzaddi is working on a huge WordPress project which we hope we can show you soon. Just a few weeks ago we launched the Shelley Morris Business Services website. We’re very pleased with the website. Tzaddi did a great job on the design and, as always, Louise‘s content is a delight to read. Continue reading »
One of the things I love about being a web designer is that there is always more to learn, be it from other web specialists or your clients. Last week at An Event Apart SeattleTzaddi and I had the chance to learn from some true experts. The speakers were not only masters in their fields, but engaging and generous with their knowledge.
Here are some highlights:
Watching Eric Meyer write CSS (you know you’re a geek when…)
Jeffrey Zeldman’s talk on “Writing the User Interface” confirmed my experience: the words in a web design matter much more than you might think and can really make a difference in how visitors use your site. So long as it invites clicking, it matters more what a button says than what it looks like.
Peaking into other designer’s processes, from beautiful sketchbooks to user research.
I enjoyed Jeff Veen’s succinct message which shows the benefits of doing your design research up front vs. the cost of changing your mind partway through the build. He also discussed why web design is so much more complex now than it was in the early days of the web, when everyone using the web were of the same type (geeks).
Shawn Henry shared insights for ensuring your site is accessible to varying abilities; from folks who read the web with braille or speech readers to limited vision users — who magnify screens to an amazing degree, but want the same site that was designed for regularly sighted users. Bottom line: there is no substitute for engaging disabled users in the design process if you want to build truly accessible sites. Her book on accessibility is free online.
Andy Budd shared how a delightful user experience is worth more than the sum of it’s parts in the loyalty that can create.
As subscribers to our newsletter have heard, Tzaddi Gordon has expanded her role in the Bluelime team. She’s working from her home office in Roberts Creek, and is excited to represent Bluelime on the coast.
Email has forever changed the way in which we communicate. Unfortunately, keeping up with the amount of Spam can be frustrating and time consuming. Although there is no easy solution, the following tips can help you fight the Spam arms race. Continue reading »
We are happy to announce the launch of