Are you looking for free WordPress Widgets? This article offers information on a couple different ways to get free WordPress Widgets. Learn what WordPress widgets are available for free and what they may be able to add to your website. Also discover how to choose the best free WordPress Widgets for your needs.
Free WordPress Widgets refer to two different groups of items, one set for WordPress.com and another set for WordPress.org.
For bloggers who use a free WordPress.com blog, 29 sidebar widgets are available from the Dashboard. Just scroll down to Appearance and chose Widgets, which occurs right after the top entry, Themes. To activate the widgets, you drag them into the Sidebar column shown on the Dashboard page, and order them by moving them up or down.
The drop-down on the Sidebar allows you to create a title for it as well as to deactivate the widget. To deactivate widgets, you have two choices. You can click on the drop down menu and deactivate them from their location in the sidebar or you can drag them out of the sidebar.
The Widgets available in the free, hosted installation of WordPress are:
- Archives, which collates your posts by month
- Author grid, which provides an array of the avatars of the blog’s authors
- Authors, which lists the authors
- Blog Stats, which collates statistics
- Blog Subscriptions, which gives people the opportunity to subscribe
- Box.net file sharing
- WordPress Calendar Widget, which shows your site’s posts
- Categories, which provides either a list or a drop-down
- Category Cloud, an alternative means of showing categories
- Custom Menu, a widget to allow a customer menu
- Del.icio.us
- Flickr
- Gravatar
- Image, to place an image in the sidebar
- Meebo
- Meta, to allow for administrator’s log-in
- Pages, the pages of your site that are not in blog format
- Recent comments
- Recent Posts
- RSS
- RSS Links
- Search
- SocialVibe, for sponsorship or support of a charity
- Text, for any text that doesn’t fit another category
- Top Clicks
- Top Posts :& Pages
- Top Rated
- WordPress Twitter Widget
- Vodpod Videos
These widgets are provided as part of your WordPress installation, so you can expect them to work as designed and to continue working through new versions and upgrades.
Free WordPress widgets are also available for the WordPress.org version of WordPress, whether you host it yourself or have it installed on the server you rent through your web hosting plan. They are a subset of the Plugins, and as of the end of June, 2011, there were 2477 of them. These widgets are offered by third parties and without guarantee. It’s up to the Developer to provide support and to provide updates. This doesn’t always happen. There are many choices of widget for the basic functions, as well as some widgets that perform unique functions.
Certain information is provided about every widget on the search results page, and some of this can help you in choosing:
- The version number is listed, as well as the date of the most recent update. This can help you determine if the developer is actively involved in maintaining the widget, as well as how much effort has been put into it thus far.
- The number of downloads is listed. This can help you determine how popular the plug-in is.
- The average customer rating is listed, and this can help you judge user satisfaction.
When you click on a particular widget title, you get access to more information: everything that’s on the search results page plus—
- The required WordPress version (minimum)
- A judgment of compatibility with the most recent WordPress release based on user reports
- A description, installation advice, FAQ, Screenshots, Other Notes, and Download Stats, the first 5 of which, WordPress depends on the developer to provide
- The Author’s User ID
- Tags that identify the widget