The 10 Best Website Widgets For Blogs In 2019

If you want to share important dates or events with your readers, a public Google Calendar is a great way to do that.

To embed a public Google calendar, just follow these steps.

1. Click Calendar Settings and scroll down to Integrate Calendar.
2. Select and copy the embed code.
3. Paste the embed code into your site.

Keep in mind that the embed code defaults to a width of 800 pixels, so make sure where you embed it has enough room for the calendar.

If you have an important event coming up, what better way to build excitement around it than to publish a countdown timer?

This website offers a free widget you can embed on your blog that displays a real-time countdown to that event.

Setting up the countdown timer is easy, and the form to create it lets you customize the background and the text displayed on it.

If you have a blog, then the chances are you'll want to stay in touch with your readers. Building a strong newsletter subscription list is a great way to do that.

Running a newsletter requires subscribing to one of these newsletter management platforms.

• MailChimp
• MadMimi
• Constant Contact
• Drip
• AWeber

Regardless which service you go with, these services provide a widget you can customize to embed a newsletter signup form into your website.

Twitter is one of the most popular social networks, so it makes sense that bloggers would want to share their social feed right from their own website.

Twitter offers a simple publication page where you just need to type the Twitter feed you want to display and copy the embed code.

You can paste the embed code anywhere on your blog to insert the Twitter feed there.

While Facebook has removed the ability to embed your entire Facebook feed into other sites, there are still ways you can embed Facebook content.

One of those is embedding specific Facebook posts.

To do this:

1. Create or open an existing Facebook post.
2. Select the three dot menu at the upper right of the post, and select Embed.
3. Paste the embed code into your blog.

A common use for this widget is in the footer of a blog post. Embedding the related Facebook post encourages readers to click on your Facebook page and engage with your community.

A great way to grow your reader Facebook community is to embed a Facebook Like box on your blog's main page. The best place for these is in the sidebar of your blog so that it shows up on every page on the site.

Setting up this widget is simple.

1. Visit the Facebook Developers Like Button Configurator page.
2. Paste your Facebook page URL into the URL to Like field.
3. Select Get Gode, copy the embed code, and paste it into your blog's sidebar widget.

Once you've pasted the code, the widget will allow anyone visiting your blog to visit and like your Facebook page.

Including comments on your blog is a great way to encourage engagement with your readership.

Disqus lets you embed a recent comments widget into the sidebar of your blog.

To install the Disqus recent comments widget, paste the following code into a text sidebar widget on your blog:

<script type="text/javascript" src="https://<yoursite>.disqus.com/recent_comments_widget.js?num_items=4&hide_avatars=0&avatar_size=32&excerpt_length=100"></script></div><a href="https://disqus.com/" rel="nofollow">Powered by Disqus</a>

Replace the following items to customize your widget:

• num_items=4: Number of comments to show
• hide_avatars=0: 1 will not display the poster's profile image
• avatar_size=3: Avatar width in pixels
• exerpt_length=100: Displayed characters of each comment

Whether you want to sell things or accept donations, Paypal button widgets are the perfect solution.

Just set up and customize a Paypal button in your Paypal account, then paste the button embed code into the sidebar, footer, or header of your site.

To set up your Paypal button:

1. Log into your Paypal account and select Manage Buttons under Seller Tools on the right.
2. Select Create New Button under Related Items. Then work through the customize wizard.
3. At the end of the Wizard, copy the embed code and paste it into your blog.

Providing readers with a simple form to send you feedback or questions is a great way to stay in touch with your fans.

Freecontactform.com lets you install a very simple contact form on your site. You're allowed up to 1000 views a month with the free version. The paid versions allow for a larger audience.

To install:

1. Download the contact form files and place them on your website using FTP software.
2. In your browser, type your blog's URL and the path to the feedbackforminstall.php file you uploaded.
3. Fill out the configuration form, which will create an HTML page. Right click the page and select View page source. Copy the HTML and paste it into your site.

Keep in mind, depending where you uploaded the feedback form files, you may need to tweak the path of the action="feedbackformprocess.php" line to match the URL where you uploaded the feedback form files.