Our Favorite Widgets
February 01, 2011
Many of you have noticed the Widget Gallery is no longer available. Most widgets, however, can be found by performing an online search for the type of widget you want to have (e.g. RSS, Music, Amazon, Etsy, etc).
There are a great number of widgets available these days, and we want to share some of our favorites, and most asked after, widgets with you:
ShareThis
Although the ShareThis widget is placed in your sidebar, the magic script places an icon in the footer of each post allowing visitors of your blog to share &/or email the post.
PostRank
The PostRank widget highlights the top posts on your blog in the sidebar.
PayPal Storefront
Configure the display of items in your store into a handy widget placed in your blog's sidebar. The widget includes a link to purchase the items directly on PayPal. This widget is recommended for blog's with wider sidebars (300px wide or greater). See the PayPal Labs FAQ here for further information.
The official Twitter widget can be customized to match your blog's design.
If you have a Facebook Fan or Business Page, you can add a Like badge to your blog's sidebar.
You can add a badge to your blog's sidebar which links to your LinkedIn profile.
Etsy
You can include a badge for your Etsy shop in your blog's sidebar. We have details on adding this widget in the Integrating Etsy shop into your TypePad blog article.
Widgets can be installed on your blog by copying the code for the widget into the 'Embed Your Own HTML' module at Design > Content for most themes.* Some widgets do offer a quick install to TypePad option which bypasses the need to copy and paste code.
*Note: For blogs using the Chroma Theme, you will use the Custom Sidebar option to add the code for the widget to the sidebar. With an Advanced Template design, the code for the widgets can be added directly to your templates. Mixed Media Layouts require copying the widget code into a Notes TypeList. Additional information on installing widgets is available here.
We've added the above widgets to the recommended widgets article in the Knowledge Base, and we'll add more widgets in the future. If you have any widgets you use and would like to recommend, please add your own recommendations in the comments.