What’s a widget?

A WordPress Widget is a plugin (or part of a plugin) that is designed to provide a simple way to arrange the various elements of your blog’s sidebar content without having to change any code.

- Paraphrase from WordPress.org’s Widget Page

So in other words, a widget can be seen as the physical manifestation of a plugin on your site.

If you take a look at the side of the screen you’ll see FuglyCode’s sidebar, and within that sidebar you’ll see a login form (that is, unless you’re logged in, of course), which is one of a handful of widgets displayed on the site.

Some plugins will come with one or many widgets, that you can freely add to your sidebar as you see fit, whereas others do not require a widget to work (Akismet, for example, does not need to be displayed on the sidebar for it to filter comment spam).

Large Archives

The Popular Archives Widget

One of the most popular widgets I’ve seen on blogs is the Archives widget (which should be somewhere on FuglyCode’s sidebar as well).  The widget lists each month your blog has been in operation, along with the number of posts for that month.  When the visitor clicks on the month, they are presented with a short description of each post and can read further by clicking on those posts.

This widget is very useful, as it allows visitors to jump to past posts that would otherwise be buried deep within your blog with just one click.  An issue arises, however, when your blog begins to age.  My personal site, for example, has been online for over two years, and the default Archives Widget (seen to the left) has gotten quite long.

Flexo Archives to the Rescue!

Large archives can become a nuisance to visitors, and take up a lot of valuable site retail space on your blog.  Luckily, today’s plugin offers a quick and easy solution to the problem.

Developed by heathharrelson, Flexo Archives comes with its own widget that you can use instead of the default Archives widget provided by WordPress.  The widget regroups the months of your archive into collapsible years, which visitors can then click on to expand.

Its very easy to install (honestly, it only takes 2 to 3 clicks of the mouse), although it only works if visitors have JavaScript enabled (without javascript, all months display just like the default archive plugin).  Some users have also reported that their archive list will sometimes not match the look of their blog.  This is more often than not caused by the blog’s stylesheets not having any defined styles for lists.

Flexo Archives

The Recap

Pros:

• Quick and easy install
• Removes website/blog clutter
• Easy to use

Cons:

• JavaScript must be enabled
• Stylesheets may need to be updated for bullet lists to match blog theme

You can find out more about Flexo Archives on the WordPress Plugins Directory

Remember the days before spam?

- Akismet

I remember my very first spam email like it was yesterday.  I was looking at my good old hotmail inbox and wondering why I never got any emails when suddenly, as though an answer to my prayers, I received an email from someone I didn’t know.

Being both naive and confused, I clicked reply, explained that I believed the senders had the wrong address, and clicked send.  It probably took a few weeks before I received my next spam email, and the next one came a few days after that, and the next a few hours, and so on.

Things are very different today, as spammers learn new tricks and spam takes on new forms, the tools at our disposal also evolve to protect us against such threats.  One of these tools is a blog plugin that I’ve been using since day 1 on my site, and will be the subject of today’s Blog Tools Review.  The name of the plugin: Akismet.

Why spam a blog?

If I had to guess, I would say that most people’s first encounter with spam is related to emails.  What’s important to remember, however, is that spam is not limited to email.  In fact, as a blogger, chances are that email spam will quickly become the least of your worries, and, without proper protection on your blog, you’ll soon be filtering through a barrage of comments to remove spam!

Now you may be wondering why a spammer would even bother with your blog.  The answer, simply put, is links.

You see, links on the internet are very important when it comes to increasing visitor traffic and increasing a site’s rank in search engine results.  It also turns out that blogs, by the very nature of their comment functionality, are a very easy target for spammers.

So how can I protect my blog?

Click above to see Akismet stats

Well that’s where Akismet comes in.  Developed by the same people who developed Wordpress, Akismet is a self-learning spam detection service that filters over 14 million spam comments a day.

It offers an API that is not blog engine specific (meaning you can pretty much use it on any blog), and is free for personal use (they also offer different plans for corporate and commercial users).

Setup is very simple, especially in for Wordpress users, as all one needs to do is install the plugin and provide an API Key.  Such keys are provided by WordPress.com and Akismet.com, are free for personal users, and are used to limit abuse of the spam busting tool.

Once installed, the plugin will begin filtering any new comments posted on your site.  Any comments deemed to be spam will be put in a separate folder from which you can review and correct Akismet if it makes any mistakes (although you may not have to correct it often.  On my personal site, for example, Akismet has an accuracy rating of over 99%.)

Review Recap

Pros:

• Easy installation for WordPress users
• Very efficient (over 99% accuracy) and learns from mistakes
• Very flexible, can be used with a variety of online tools
• Free for personal use and reasonable prices for professional or corporate use

Get more information on Akismet’s web site or the WordPress Plugin Directory

Articles of this series will be posted every Wednesday around noon ET and will focus on the different tools, themes and plugins that I commonly use to make my blogs easier to maintain and manage.  It was started on my personal site as a thank you to the open source community responsible for the creation of so many useful and free blogging tools, and will now become a regular part of FuglyCode.com.

If you have any ideas for blog tools that you’d like to see reviewed on FuglyCode.com, feel free to drop us a message using our Contact page.

View the first Blog Tools Review

View all Blog Tools Review articles in the series

What’s a plugin?

Before we jump into reviewing the different plugins that I use in my blogs, I think its a good idea to take a step back and understand what a plugin really is:

Lets say your blog is a small, old car.  When we were setting up the blog’s theme, we were actually doing things like giving the car a new paintjob, putting some new leather on the seats, and hanging a pair of fuzzy dice on the rear-view mirror (oh yea!).

Now that we have a pretty hot ride, we start to focus on making the car run, and begin installing upgrades like new tires, new suspensions and a lower frame.  These upgrades, while not changing the basic functionality of the car, make it run smoother, and to our taste.  This is the nature of a blog plugin.

So a plugin is a small piece of code that adds to or changes the functionality of your blog.  They come in all shapes and sizes (from simple to very complex), most of which are created and can be used for free on your blog.  With time, you will learn to master the art of including plugins on your blog seamlessly.  This will allow you to add new functionality to your blog, while not distracting your visitors.

Our First Plugin Review: WP-Cumulus

WP-Cumulus on Folaji.com

For our first blog review, we’ll be looking at one of my favorite plugins: WP-Cumulus.  This plugin takes your blog’s tags, categories, or both, and creates a 3D floating cloud of clickable links, which is then displayed in your blog’s sidebar.

Not only is the 3D rendered “cloud” visually appealing, it also engages your visitors, allowing them to skim through all of your blog’s content with the quick movement of a mouse.  The plugin is very easy to install and configure, and allows you to set the tag cloud’s colours and size to any RGB value.

For those of you that are concerned about the information being lost to search engine bots, WP-Cumulus will display a normal list of tags to any visitor that does not have Flash 9 or higher installed and javascript enabled.  Although some users might like this functionality, I see it more as a double edged sword.  Yes, the search engine bots will be able to crawl your site using tags, but this also means that anybody who doesn’t have Flash 9 and javascript enabled won’t see WP-Cumulus, but isntead will see the normal list of tags (which is not as professional looking as the 3D tag cloud itself).

So I say take the time to download and install this plugin.  Even if you don’t end up using it, its fun to setup and test (and who knows, you might just keep it on your site after giving it a test drive).

The WP-Cumulus plugin is available for WordPress self hosted blogs free of charge, and can be downloaded from the Wordpress.org Plugin Directory.

Review Recap

Pros:

• Beautiful and professional looking
• Very easy to install and configure
• Customizable height, width and colours
• Displays normal tag cloud to visitors without flash (useful for search engine bots)

Cons:

• Requires Flash 9 (or better) and javascript enabled
• May not be available to all blog visitors and browsers (ie: doesn’t seem to work in Internet Explorer 6)

Download WP-Cumulus here!

What’s a Theme?

A theme is to a blog like makeup is to a person.

- Me

What does that mean?  It means that themes allow you to personalize your blog, just like makeup allows you to change your looks and express yourself (if you’re into that kind of thing…).  Themes typically encompass everything that has to do with the visual look and feel of your blog.  They are often created by the online community, and most are free to use, usually only requiring a small mention of the theme author somewhere on your blog (can you find the name and author of the theme used on Folaji.com?).

Are Themes really that important for my blog?

The answer, simply put, is no (you thought I was going to say yes, huh? gotcha!).

Although themes allow you to give your site a professional and inviting look, they are in no way a substitute for content.  Now don’t get me wrong, themes are a very powerful tool and can be very useful, but if you think that all you need on your blog is a good theme to attract visitors, you are mistaken.

Think about it for a second.  Say you are in a book store and you see this book with a professional looking cover.  You walk up to the book, take a peak inside and find that there is no text.  In fact, there are no pages in the book at all, its just an empty shell of a book with a cool cover.  Would you buy the book?  Would you suggest it to a friend?  Well, your blog is the same way, it can be the most beautiful blog in the world, but if it has no content, people won’t visit it.

Now Themes aren’t a bad thing, just remember that they shouldn’t be the only thing your blog has to show for itself.

So, how do I set my theme?

Blogs typically come with a default theme, which is usually very dry and fugly (click here to see WordPress’ default theme).  Luckily, most blog engines have built-in tools that allow you to select and install themes with little to no work on your part (allowing you to focus on your blog’s content, which is what you should be doing).

If your blog is hosted on your own server, then chances are that your particular blog engine has a library or directory of themes available to you (like WordPress’ Free Themes Directory).  If, on the other hand, you are using a free service (comparable to WordPress.com or Blogspot.com) then you will be limited to a dozen or so preselected themes. In some cases (Blogspot.com for example) you’ll be allowed to manually update the code of your applied theme through the blog’s admin panel, although chances are you’ll need basic knowledge of HTML and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS).

Its so purdy!

And there we go, a quick, hopefully effective crash course on blog themes.  Next week, I’ll try to do an overview on blog plugins, and then I’ll start reviewing all of the plugins currently being used in my different blogs.  As always, feel free to leave any questions or comments in the comments section (or you can send them to me using the Contact Page).

So first off, what’s a blog?

The very first thing that one should know is: what is a blog?

A blog (a contraction of the term “web log“) is a type of website, usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in reverse-chronological order.
- Wikipedia

If that didn’t make any sense, then you can look at it this way: a blog is kind of like a public diary, except that it can be about anything: news, politics, events, music, videos, personal stuff, etc.  There exists millions of blogs all over the internet that cover a wide range of subjects, and the regrouping of all these blogs together is known as “The Blogosphere” (sounds cheesy, I know, but what can you do?).

Ok, so whats a Blog Engine?

A Blog Engine is a software application designed to make a website act like a blog with little to no work required on the part of the website owner.  Typically, a blog engine will ask you a few simple questions, such as a blog name and your email address.  If you take a little more time at setup, you can also set the look and feel of the blog with predefined themes, and after no more than 5 to 10 minutes, your blog is up and running and waiting for your first post.

Blog engines are generally offered in two different formats: as a sign-up service (often free, ie: Blogger, Wordpress.com), or as a download for hosting on your own personal servers (ie: Wordpress.org, which is also free, as well as open source).  The main difference between these two types of engines is that unless you are using an open source engine on your own server, you will probably be limited in your ability to personalize the look and feel of your blog, as well as how much memory you have to store your content (ie: if you want to posts videos or large images for example).

What engine does FuglyCode.com use?

When I launched my personal site (Folaji.com), I didn’t want to create a personal blog, but I also didn’t want to build the website from a scratch.  I began looking for a tool that would allow me to publish the type of content I wanted to create, and this being a personal project that was very dear to me, I also wanted as much control over the site and the tool as possible.  I already had a personal web server, and therefore decided that the Wordpress.org engine would be the best for me (I had previously seen it running on MatthewGood.Org and CNN’s Political Ticker, two sites that clearly demonstrated the power of this particular blog engine).

I purchased the Folaji.com domain name, downloaded the Wordpress.org blog engine and installed it on the server, and wrote my first post, all in a matter of a few hours.  At the time, I was new to WordPress and to the different features that their blog engine really offered.  It wasn’t long, however, before I discovered the true power of the blog engine: plug-ins (which I’ll begin talking about in the next post).

That’s all for now!

Well hopefully that cleared up any questions you may have had regarding blog engines.  If you have any questions, feel free to type them in the comments section below.  If you don’t want to leave a comment, you can send your question by email by using the Contact Page.