My best wordpress widgets 2010 that almost every bloggers have.
Update: I have post 19 best blog plugins i use that complete these best widgets.
Anyway i will share what my best wordpress wigdets to you that i use for this blog. Basically i just have a few widgets in my sidebar to help my visitors browsing all of my posts easily, and these are my best one.
Note, widgets and plugins in wordpress can be different. Find my must have wordpress plugins that are useful for wordpresss SEO and avoid spams, including how to configure them here.
At the first month i started my blog, i have many widgets as it was really looking cool. But then i decide to delete many of them which were not neccessary to be displayed, because using too much plugins can slow down your site’s performance, and it will affect your site’s reputations in visitor and Search engines’s eyes. Slow site equal to unhappy visitors and less score for your site’s ranking (see Video under this post).
I strongly recommend that you use only important widgets because lots of people have failed upgrade to latest version of wordpress, this i know from wordpress.org support forum, those failed upgrades are mainly caused by many plugins which are not compatible.
Do not confused about wordpress widgets vs wordpress plugins though. WordPress plugins are usually you install and activate and it help to improve your blog’s functionality without showing them to public. But widgets you can show them to your visitors, either in sidebar, or even in footer if you have widgetized footer.
So here are my best wordpress widgets:
1. My most popular posts.
Download plugin here.
This widgets is really awesome and useful for me and for my visitors. For me, i can see, how success i did search keywords, that people found these posts via search engines. For my visitors, it helps them to navigate to the posts that mostly viewed.
2. My Random Posts (worth a look).
Download.
It displays all of my post randomly in my sidebar, so my visitors can find my posts that might be interesting for them without going to sitemap page.
3. My recent post widgets.
It is coming with wordpress installation by default.
Displaying what i have written recently, so my visitors can see the most updated posts.
4. My Categories.
Also already built-in widgets.
Since i have many categories, i guess it will be really nice if people can choose any categories they want to view. But mostly i write WordPress Tutorial, so this is my most popular category.
5. Category RSS.
This widgets give links to enable my visitors subscribing my blog posts for any interesting or useful Category for them.
Setting up specific category RSS you can find here.
6. Archives.
Another built-in widget
My blog’s age is not that old 🙂 but i thought displaying archives is giving me or my visitors to surf what i have been posted so far.
7. Search widget.
Some theme already have search box in, some don’t. However you can activate this widget if you theme does not provide a search box.
If people may want to find a specific post, this can be used easily.
See more on how to use wordpress 3 widgets here, feel free to give any feedbacks if you have different of views 🙂
Why your site’s performance or speed is important for Search Engine like Google:
Nice list here are few which I use and recommend:
Recent posts
Popular posts
Random Posts
Search box
Categories
Tags
Search box
One which I’m yet to add it selected posts..
@Harsh Agrawal, Brilliant lists as well there Harsh 😉
My favorite is popular post, because i can really see what informations users might need most. Thanks for coming by 😀
You seriously repeat the official wordpress plugins and state they are your favourites?
Come on lads, there are tons of better ones..
@JOHN, True, there are tons of betters widgets out there, but everyone has their own preferences 🙂 Would you mind to mention the better ones? i should check out too 🙂
Good list of plugins. But It would need some more.
@wp programming, Yes, some people like to have lots of plugins, but i personally reducing using plugins, only the important ones, as too much plugins will decrease your page speed. Especially with this blog as i have lots of videos. Thanks for the comment 🙂
btw, pagenavi, simple tags, syntaxhighlighter…
recent post widget -> unnecessary, i can see on first page in same order!!! use most commented posts or something… cheers
@scw, pagenavi, simple tags, and syntaxhighlighters are plugins, and not widgets.
I have used pagenavi and syntaxhighlighters, but i remove those, because there were slowing down my blog.
I am trying to use a few plugins and widgets, and only the important ones.
Thank you for the input and comment!
nice site…
i wanna get some widgets but dnt know how to run these widgets in my site..
can anyone guide me?
@princess, Hey there,
First step is installing the plugin so that the widgets will be available to use.
Then after they’re installed, you can go to appearance and widgets, and you will see them, drag and drop them to your sidebar, click “save” they will be appeared!.
*Update: To use widgets: https://www.wpvidz.com/how-to-use-widgets-in-wordpress-3/
Let me know if it helps:)
This is a nice list. I am currently trying to include Polls widget for wordpress. That sounds like a very useful widget. Others just kind of adds as an extra.
Hey Mayur,
I have installed polls widget in my other blog, and it is a cool widget. Good luck and have fun with it.
Hey! its great to find this post directly through google when I was searching for ‘best wordpress widgets’. Congrats!
They are all good widgets. Thank you for this useful post. I’m referring this post in my coming tutorial for this wednesday.
Hey Suresh!
Yes, i noticed it too, thanks!
Can’t wait to see your coming tutorial.
Thanks for visiting 😀
Hey – what about the fantastic Graceful Sidebar Plugin which provides a customized sidebar widget for each page or post? (Shameless self-promotion 😉 )
Mike,
LOl, thanks for the link, will try it sometimes 🙂
Kimi.
I like your article,
I’ve recently started a blog, the information you provide on this site has helped me tremendously. Thank you for all …
very helpful plugins for new bloggers
nice collections …
I liked the random posts widget
Great list. This was exactly what I was looking for. Fortunately, the theme I am using already implements a search widget which was pretty cool. Thanks for the info.
Random question but I noticed you are using thesis and have some cool background title background color integrated in your sidebars… can you share the code you used to get that effect? Thanks a lot!
Hi Stewart,
Sure, I add this css code in custom.css file;
.custom .sidebar h3{background:#ddd;border-bottom:1px solid #999;text-shadow:1px 1px 1px #999;padding:3px 3px 3px 6px;}Thanks
Kimi.
Very useful list!
Thanks.
Not a bad list, but would love to see more unique ones.