{"id":7142,"date":"2017-01-08T08:17:31","date_gmt":"2017-01-08T08:17:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hostileblog.com\/?p=4164"},"modified":"2020-05-30T21:35:51","modified_gmt":"2020-05-31T01:35:51","slug":"best-wordpresss-widget-blog","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.carnaghan.com\/best-wordpresss-widget-blog\/","title":{"rendered":"Best WordPress widgets for your blog (2018)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Widgets are one of the most impressive and powerful features of the WordPress content management system. They make your website look attractive and user-friendly.<\/p>\n

Once you install WordPress, the CMS will add up to 10 different widgets to your blog or website. These widgets have limited functionality. Furthermore, they’re not customizable.<\/p>\n

Free themes<\/a> may not add new widgets to your WP site. To add a new widget, you’ll have to install a new WP plugin. As a blogger, you should know that too many plugins may slow down your website. If the plugin is badly programmed, it will lead to high server resource consumption<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Premium WordPress templates<\/a>\u00a0provide several interesting and customizable widgets. Hence, you consider upgrading from a free to a premium theme.<\/p>\n

For the best experience of the visitors, you should keep the widget area look clutter free. You should also avoid using too many WordPress plugins.<\/p>\n

\"best<\/p>\n

It doesn’t\u00a0matter what theme you are using, you should consider placing the below best WordPress widgets to the sidebar.<\/p>\n

Best WordPress widget that your blog should have<\/h2>\n

Latest post with thumbnails<\/h3>\n

Images make blog posts look attractive. They also grab the attention of the visitors. If you add the latest post widget<\/a> with thumbnails, the likelihood of visitors going through the new articles will increase.<\/p>\n

Trending or popular posts<\/h3>\n

These two widgets give exposure to the popular articles on your WordPress blog or website. If you’ve added affiliate links<\/a> to these posts, the popular post widget<\/a> will boost conversion.<\/p>\n

Recent comments<\/h3>\n

Comments are excellent signs of user engagement. Search engines index comments and they may rank your web page for the keywords in the comment. To keep the comment form on your site busy, consider placing this WordPress widget on the sidebar.<\/p>\n

Social network icons<\/h3>\n

These icons will allow visitors to find your social profiles. If you add FB, Twitter, or LinkedIn social media icon widget<\/a> to the sidebar, people will follow you on social networks.<\/p>\n

Search box<\/h3>\n

This widget helps visitors in finding the posts on your website. If Google has indexed all the posts on your website, add the Google Custom Search engine<\/a> code in a text widget<\/a> and add the widget to the sidebar.<\/p>\n

Newsletter or opt-in forms<\/h3>\n

One of the most powerful methods to increase conversion rate and get regular visitors is to place a newsletter subscription widget<\/a> to the site. Once visitors subscribes to your newsletter, you can send new posts to their inbox on regular basis manually or automatically with services such as MailChimp, Aweber, GetResponse, etc.<\/p>\n

WordPress widgets that you shouldn’t use<\/h2>\n

Twitter and Facebook<\/h3>\n

To add the Facebook Like box or twitter stream, you\u2019ll have to add code provided by FB or twitter. The code will increase the size of your pages and make them slow. FB and Twitter might be using CDN service, but JS or CSS code that renders their widget should be still downloaded on visitors device.<\/p>\n

Random post<\/h3>\n

Google transfers link juice of one page to another. If you add the Random Post WordPress widget, Google will not be able to identify your internal link<\/a> structure. Furthermore, visitors will be confused if they don’t find the content on your site.<\/p>\n

Here’s an example for the same:<\/p>\n

I’ve added the random post widget to this site. Currently, the plugin is showing the list of the following posts:<\/p>\n