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This is a brilliant way to link your website and blog or to advertise your products/advice on other sites. The widget displays your most recent posts as headlines which people can click on to go straight to your blog.

What is a widget? Simply put, a widget is a portable chunk of the web i.e. a small frame showing content from a website or blog.

How to create your own widget
1. Go to www.widgetbox.com
2. Click on Make a Blidget.
3. Type your blog address including the http://
4. Click Continue.
5. Choose a colour theme.

6. Display headlines only .
7. Select Header style ( if you check Title and Image you can select an image from one of your posts which will show up in the box below).
8. Enter a title, caption, description and tags (like keywords).
9. Choose whether to list in the gallery (so other people can find and download your widget).
10. When you are happy with how your blidget looks on the preview, click on the “Publish Widget” button.
11. At this point, you need to register (create a free account).
12. Once you see the Congratulations page, click the “Get Widget” button.

Putting a widget onto your website   
To display your widget on your website, click on “Get Widget Code”, copy the JavaScript and paste into the code of your webpage where you want the widget to appear.

For a hosted Wordpress blog, you can paste the code into a text widget. (Widgetbox will send you an email with your unique address). Unfortunately, free Wordpress blogs do not support JavaScript so you’ll have to make do with a “permalink” to your widget on your blogroll or inside a page or post.
If your posts include photos, you can choose to show the first image in each post on the widget which makes it a lot more visually appealing.

Add cool widgets to your blog
If you browse the Gallery on WidgetBox, you can browse widgets by category and pick something relevant to your blog to download and add to your sidebar. My favourite is Jackson Pollock’s Widget which allows you to create your own artwork “Jackson Pollock style” using your mouse.