Widgets are freaking great. Here’s a quick guide on how they work.

FIRSTLY

Widgets are little interweb gadgets you can add to the sidebars (and sometimes, footers) of your website to make them more snazzy. Stuff like Twitter Timelines, visitor counters (which, by the way, is so 2008), or even just images and text are all possible. Well, not all.

BECAUSE OF REASONS

There’s some internet stuff involved, but basically since you don’t host the site (Mediafactory does through someone else, probably Dreamhost or something), there’s a finite amount of plugins available. Mediafactory decides what plugins and widgets you get. (Plugins can be used as widgets, but widgets aren’t all plugins. Kind of like how all science fiction books can be used to hit people with, but not all hitting devices are science fiction books.)

ANYWAY

You can access your widgets by going to the left sidebar and hovering over Appearance. Then you should see Widgets. Click.

My theme allows three different areas for widgets. It’s pretty easy to check up on where they appear, and if you’re not 100% sure, drop something in and see what happens on your blog!

DEFAULTS

You’ve probably figured this out already, but most blogs will come with default widgets, like Meta and whatnot. Delete simply by dragging them out of the sidebars they appear in. They’ll vanish in a figurative puff of smoke.

Look, you don’t need that noise. Maybe if you had a lot of people contributing content to your website directly, but that Meta widget will be useful to you, and to you only. Don’t let it clutter your website.

Or do.

Whatever.

GOOD WIDGETS TO HAVE

Some themes don’t have a spot for pages to automatically populate (like mine). In that case, drag the Pages widget into an area. The main sidebar is usually best, because you want them to be obvious. I have also have a text widget which reads: “Check out my website: Pop Culture-y. We talk about pop culture!” Categories and tags are usually a good idea, so people can head straight to a certain tag or category that interests them.

BY THE WAY

The HTML code for linking a website is as below:

<a href=”http://www.websitename.com/webpage”>Link text!</a>

The ” ” are important if you’re linking to an outside website. And it’s also important to close that link with the </a>. Things get messy if any part of that code is messed up. Also, make sure you’re in the HTML editor, not the Visual (WYSIWYG) editor. That’s the top right of the edit box.

I CAN’T THINK OF ANYTHING ELSE OF IMPORTANCE

Let me know if you do.