15 Useful Blogspot Widgets and Hacks

by Ishan on April 15, 2009 · 26 comments

blogger-logoBlogger is a very feature rich and at the same time simple to use platform. It can be extended via various widgets and hacks. Here are 15 most useful hacks for Blogger (Blogspot.)

  1. PostRank Popular Posts: Post Rank Widget is most in-depth Popular Posts widget available today. Engagement data sources like Digg, Twitter, Delicious, Furl, Number of Comments, Views and many others are considered and the final outcome is a list that has most popular articles ranked by data from around the web. The problem? Widget may look alien as there are limited options to customize and blend with your theme.
  2. Most Commented Posts: If you are not happy with the look of the PostRank widget in your sidebar, this widget can serve as a good "Popular posts" Widget for you.
  3. Recent Posts Widget: You can display recent posts in Blogger using feeds but they are limited to five posts. This widget lets you add more than five posts to the list.
  4. Recent Comments Widget: Lets you display recent comments in sidebar or footer.
  5. Top Commentators Widget: Lets you reward top commentators by automatically linking to their sites.
  6. Tabbed Widget: This widget has Recent Posts, Categories and Archives which users can easily switch through. You save plenty of space by having three widgets in one spot.
  7. Related Posts: Displaying related posts after a post makes readers hang out for more time on your blog. This hack displays a custom number of posts from same tag.
  8. Post and Comment Count: A little bragging never hurts. So, why not show total number of posts and comments in your sidebar? It will also serve as social-proof to new visitors!
  9. FeedFlare: You can activate Feedflare  from within the “Optimize” tab of your FeedBurner account. It displays text links below your posts to let users share items. You can customize it to display the number of comments  and the number of blogs that link to each post.
  10. ShareThis:  For those who don't like text links, ShareThis is a cool widget with a drop down menu for sharing content.
  11. Twitter Badge: You can not ignore Twitter as a social and promotional medium. This widget displays information about you and your recent tweets.
  12. Tweet This: Adds a button to your blog that lets readers share posts with a single click. (Our Tweet This button also does the same thing! Try it out!)
  13. DISQUS Comment System: Blogger's default comment system is a bit featureless and sometimes irritating (Because of Google's old love for Firefox, I face many problems with my Opera browser!). As a third party alternative, DISQUS has threaded comments, comment moderation through their control panel and many other features. It will simplify commenting for your readers.
  14. Intense Debate Comment System: Another alternative comment system for Blogspot blogs. Further Reading: How to Install Intense Debate Comments in Blogger.
  15. Comment Luv: Encourages your visitors to comment. It displays latest post from commentator's blog thus giving some search engine love.

Some of the hacks are complex and can break templates.  So, please take a backup of your live template before you edit anything else.  You may want to use a test blog.

These were 15 of the most useful widgets and hacks for blogspot blogs. Do you have any suggestion? Do not forget to tell us through comments!

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About Writer [Blogging With Success]About Author Hi, I am a young Blogger from India. I am very passionate about blogging and also co-founder of Blogging With Success. I write about general blogging tips and WordPress. You can read other posts by me here.If you need help, feel free to contact anytime!

{ 23 comments }

PRAVEEN TRIVEDI May 19, 2010

is comluv is available for blogger?

.-= PRAVEEN TRIVEDI´s recent blog ..????? ???? ???? ??? ??? ???????? ?? ???? ?? ???? ?? "?????" ? =-.

SBA May 19, 2010

You've just opened an old wound! Commentluv used to be available for Blogger but they dropped support — my blogspot blog was one of the casualties. That began a journey of finding a replacement comment system and lots of ugly mishaps. So the answer is no, unfortunatley.

Anyone can leave their last blog address on comments here , as you did. You first need to register with Commentluv. I see they put question marks instead of your native language. Result looks odd but the link works.

Alamin April 19, 2010

Thanks i really love commentluv

Masaud Akhter April 17, 2010

i m engnr. masaud akhter and luv blogging about engineering softwares tutorials,setups and ebooks. i found this blogs .. its good .. i appreciate ur wrk.. and i luv comments which encourages publishers..

thnx

SBA April 17, 2010

Hello Masaud,
Comments are very encouraging to blol owners — thanks for yours! Yours is a specialty niche and you need to promote your blog in that community — are there any forums where the students ask questions and help each other? If so you could participate and get your blog content 'noticed.' I suggest you read this post about another blogger's tactics on promotion: http://bloggingwithsuccess.net/case-study-success

Best of luck to you.

bubu February 19, 2010

i have a blog but I restricted to the public. only the users I chose can read the blog. I can not add recent comments widget.. It just does not work. I tried many types of widgets both RSS feed kind and html kinds but nothing seems to work. do you think the reason is related the restriction to the public view?

SBA February 19, 2010

bubu, seems you have me working in the dark here. Is this a blogspot blog? The widgets are for Blogger. If you're on WP and using a plugin then maybe look at the documentation — they may have way to show comments. Check all of the plugin options…

SBA February 19, 2010

I just read your contact form message and yours is a blogspot blog. So, it has to be the fact that each person must sign in to read the blog. The widget is not 'an authorized person' so you're not going to see the comments feed! Similarly when a blog is public you can type your comment feed in a browser and see all comments:

http:// YOURBLOGs name.blogspot.com/feeds/comments/default

Make the blog private and that url stops working… I tested it on one of my blogs.

Present Technology February 13, 2010

Thanks for sharing. Its really helpful for bloggers.

Regards

faraz January 18, 2010

All tricks are fantastic.. thanks for sharing..

Raz November 28, 2009

hai my dear friend i am also from india… i liked u r posts and materials.. nice blog also … keep it up….

andhra pradesh

Abol Joe October 9, 2009

By this blogspot widgets, it's make easy to make a network with a niche community .. Thank foe sharing your compilation with us ..

mytheory October 3, 2009

thx 4 replying my comment

i have sign up with postrank but my blog haven't discovered by the system yet

what should i do to make my blog discovered by system?

it seems that my blog haven't discovered by the system yet, i couldn't use the top posts widget

SBA October 4, 2009

I guess there was a time lag or you needed to refresh the browser — it works now!

<img src="http://bloggingwithsuccess.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/mytherory.png"&gt;

What about your comment system?

mytheory October 28, 2009

how come the post rank works on your browser? last time i tried it, it still shows the postrank blog top post,not mine. In fact i have submitted and verify my blog.

and about the comment system, i still have a problem with disqus.com. Now i'm still waiting for the reply from them. Anyway, what is other good comment system that i can use in blogspot platform?

mytheory September 27, 2009

yay….

i look for most popular post widget for a very long time

i often found similar widget but it always not working on my blog

hopefully yours will work well on my blog.

keep it up!

Mr. I September 27, 2009

Let us know if you encounter any problems with it!

mytheory September 27, 2009

the postrank popular post widget doesn't work well, it display the most popular post of postrank.com not popular post of my blog. Instead i used Most commented posts, it works well for me. Thanks!

regards

SBA September 28, 2009

You should try signing up for the postrank first, then customize the widget. Normally you can key in any valid http address.

I visited your blog and saw the most commented posts widget. Tried to leave a comment but got this blogger error:

blogID: 1248966337898610095

host: http://www.blogger.com
postID: 1753010807441027628

uri: /comment-iframe.do

Husac June 2, 2009

Yep…comes in handy. Thanks !

Smart Boy Designs April 22, 2009

Excellent widgets and tools. Going through each one, and seeing what I might benefit from!

Thanks for sharing!

Fransiska April 17, 2009

I am personally interested with Comment Luv. You can say it's as a reward for your blog visitor/commenter, as well as a bait to lure them back in the future.

Will April 16, 2009

Nice list you got here. Very useful!

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