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First impressions count!

Combine poor theme choice with a cluttered sidebar and you have a recipe for convincing first time visitors NOT to subscribe to your blog.  They’re too busy being turned off to notice your great posts!

Unfortunately sidebar clutter creeps up on most bloggers.

In this seventh activity you will:

  1. Be introduced to what are widgets and how to add widgets to your blog sidebar
  2. Learn about my “must have widgets” for educator’s personal blog sidebars
  3. Be introduced to using categories and tags on blog posts
  4. Learn how to set up your categories
  5. Learn how to set up your tags
  6. Set up your widgets, tags and categories
  7. Complete the extension activity (if you have time)

Step 1: Introduction to widgets

The term widget refers to any tool or content that you add, arrange or remove from the sidebar(s) of your blog — these are the blocks that make up your sidebar.

Changing your sidebar widgets is as simple as:

1.  Go to Appearance > Widgets in your Dashboard

Open your sidebar

3.  To add a widget, drag it from the Available Widgets or Inactive Widgets areas on the left into the Sidebar area on the right

Adding a widget

4.  Drop the widget when you see a dashed line appear – this indicates the widget is in place

Dropping a widget into the sidebar

5.  To open and close a widget, mouse over the widget bar and click the small arrow that appears to the right.

  • Many widgets have configuration options.
  • All you need to do is open, configure the widget and click Save to make changes to the widget

Category widget

6.  To remove a widget from a sidebar click Remove.

Here’s a summary Edublogs Widgets and what they’re used for

Please note:

  • ClustrMaps, Delicious, FlickR, Twitter, VodPod Widgets are only available on Edublogs Pro blogs
  • You need to activate the Widget Pack plugin in Plugins > Installed for the ClustrMaps, Delicious, FlickR, Twitter, VodPod Widgets to be listed in Appearance > Widgets

Summary of Edublogs Widgets

Step 2:  ’Must Have’ Widgets for blog sidebars

Sidebar clutter is a good way of convincing first time visitors NOT to subscribe to your blog.

Trouble is sidebar clutter creeps up on all of us.

The key is to focus on ‘What are the most important things you are trying to achieve when some one visits your blog?”

The main aims on your personal blog should include:

  1. Making it easy for readers to know what you write about and to find content
  2. Encouraging readers to subscribe to your blog by RSS and email

How do you do this?

Always put the most important widgets at the top of the blog.

Here’s my recommended ‘must have’ widgets for personal blogs listed in order from top of sidebar:

  1. Search widget
  2. Subscribe by RSS  - Here’s the instructions for how you set it up.
  3. Subscribe by Email  - Here’s the instructions for how you set it up.
  4. Categories widget
  5. Tag cloud widget

All other widgets you need to balance your personal desires with minimising sidebar clutter.

Please note:

Step 3: Introduction to Tags and Categories

Tags and categories on posts are used to help readers locate information in different ways.

Categories are like chapters of a book; they provide a general overview of the topics you blog about.

Whereas tags are more like the index at the back of the book and explode the topic into a million bits.

On a post you can add as many tags and categories as you need to make the post easier to locate.

The categories and tags you use are displayed in your blog sidebar using the categories widget and tag widget.

When your readers click on a categories or tag link in your sidebar it loads a page with all posts that use that tag or category.

Step 4:  Setting up your categories

Categories can have unique names and be wordy; you want them sufficiently descriptive so your reader understands the type of subject matter they will find when they click on the link.

As a general rule you tend to limit the total number of categories you use on a blog.

Here’s my advice for planning your categories:

  1. Think of categories as if you were listing the chapters at the front of a book.
  2. Make them descriptive enough so your readers understand the subject matter you’re writing about.
  3. Ideally use 10 or less categories and make each category be about the same length (to look visually good in the sidebar)
  4. But don’t stress too much!  You can always edit them again later!

Here’s an example of the categories used on The Edublogger

Examples of categories used on The Edublogger

Here’s how to create categories

You can assign and/or add new categories to posts before you publish them using the Categories module to the right of the Write post area.

Just select the checkbox next to a category to associate it with a post.

Adding a category to a post

Creating a new category is simple as:

1.  Click on +Add New Category

2.  Type in the name of your new category

3.  Click Add

Creating a new category

Managing your Categories

You can also add new catgories and manage existing ones via the following areas in your dashboard:

1.  Posts > Categories

  • Handy for renaming a category quickly — this automatically changes it on all posts it has been assigned to
  • When you delete a category it only deletes that category only and not the posts associated with it.  If no other categories are assigned to the post than it will be assigned the default category which is normally Uncategorized
  • You can’t delete your default category

Using Category page

2.  Using the Quick Edit action menu below a post title on your Posts > Edit page

  • Handy for quickly assigning an existing category to a post

Assigning an existing category to a post

Adding your Category widget to your sidebar

Now to complete the process all you need to do is add your Category widget to your blog sidebar via Appearance > Widgets.

You notice on my blogs I changed the title of the Category widgets to titles that my readers will understand more:

Adding a widget

Step 5:  Setting up your tags

Example of a tag cloudTags are displayed on your blog as a tag cloud; clicking on a tag name will take your readers to all posts tagged with that term.

Tags are normally short, one or two words, and are generally keywords.

Here’s an example of the tags used on The Edublogger.

Here’s my advice for tags

  1. Choose terms readers would be likely to use if they searched your blog
  2. Make sure they are terms your readers can relate to
  3. Limit them to one or two words
  4. Remember your tag cloud displays your top 45 tags.
  5. The larger the size of the word in the tag cloud the more posts that have been tagged using that term

Adding tags to posts

Tags are added when you write posts by typing your desired tags in the Add New Tag text box and then clicking Add.

  • Each tag needs to be separated with a comma otherwise the system considers the words to be one tag.
  • To remove a tag from a post just click the X to the left of that tag.

Adding tags to posts

Managing your Tags

You can also add new tags and manage existing ones via the following areas in your dashboard:

1.  Posts > Post Tags

2.  Using the Quick Edit action menu below a post title on your Posts > Edit page

  • Handy for quickly assigning new tags to a post

Adding your tag widget to your sidebar

Now to complete the process all you need to do is add your Tag widget to your blog sidebar via Appearance > Widgets.

You notice on my blogs I changed the title of the Tag widgets to titles that my readers will understand more:

Step 6: Set up your widgets, tags and categories

Now we’ve talked about widgets, tags and categories it’s time to show us what you’ve learnt.

Here’s what we would like you to do:

1. Check out your blogs sidebars and make the changes.

  • Are they cluttered?
  • Are there any widgets you don’t need and should remove?
  • Are there any widgets on my recommended ‘must have’ widget list you need to add?
  • Are there any other widgets from the student and class blog recommended list you want to add?

2.  Work on your categories and tags

  • If you don’t currently use any categories, go to Posts > Categories and set up the names of the new categories.
  • Now work through your existing posts and add assign the categories to your posts using the Quick Edit action link menu in Posts > Edit.  While you are doing this add your tags.
  • Add your Category widget and tag cloud widget to your blog side bar
  • Remember categories won’t display in your Category widget until they have been assigned to a post

Remember to come back to this post and leave a comment to ask us to check out how you went.

Refer to the extension activity if you want write a post about your experience.

Step 7:  Complete the extension activity (if you have time)

Write a post on what you’ve learnt from this activity.

Here’s some ideas of what you might like to write about:

  1. How was your blog sidebar?  Was it cluttered?  What was missing and why?  What needed to be removed and why?  What would you include on your list of ‘must have’ widgets?
  2. Has this post changed your thoughts about how tags and categories are used?  What changes did you make to your tags and categories.
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