This post will briefly explain how to use widgets within your WordPress blog. You will find that WordPress gives you quite a few useful widgets with the initial installation.
Note: My blogs are powered by the Thesis Theme. I highly recommend that you consider using Thesis. It is, hands down, the best WordPress theme available for many many reasons. You can go here to learn more about Thesis.
Some widgets are actually plugins. If you look inside your wp-content/plugins directory on your server, you will see them there.
On my my blogs I take advantage of the text widget liberally. I simply place the HTML code inside this particular widget and I am in business. But first things first. Where can you find WordPress widgets?
Finding WordPress Widgets
A good place to start is the WordPress Plugin Directory. You will find it at http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/. There, you can search from among hundreds of plugins (some of which are widgets). Another good place to look is at http://www.deauxmaingroup.com/wordpress-widget-list/. Here, you will find a massive list of WordPress widgets. The WordPress website has a list of widgets as well. Take a look around at the Chris Pirillo blog and see masterful use of widgets.
Download, Unzip, Upload, and Activate Your Widget Plugin
Your next step is to download your widget, extract it, and upload it into your WordPress Plugins directory on your server. Once it is on your server, go to your WordPress dashboard and activate it.
Example of Using the Text Widget to Display Advertisements
As I mentioned earlier, I make liberal use of the built-in text widget to display advertisements on my blogs. For example, you look at the Subscription side bar to the right; this is a text widget.
All you have to do is go into the widget section of your WordPress Dashboard and place a text widget in the location where you want the Ad to appear.
Copy the following HTML code into the widget, select which sidebar you want it to appear in and click Save Widget. Now the HTML code contains links to my particular Facebook, Twitter and RSS feeds. (The RSS feed links are from FeedBurner. I recommend you get a free FreedBurner account) You will have to go into the code and remove my information and replace it with your own. You will also notice that the links to the images point to my server. Again, you should upload these images to your server and then modify the code to reflect the location on your server.
You may download the images here. I have them packaged in a zip file.
The Video
I have include a short video that walks you through much of this. The video appears at the bottom of this page. I also recommend looking at my article Recommended WordPress Plugins for additional information concerning plugins.
V I D E O
