Widget.. what?

The biggest obstacle for me so far in developing my blog would have to be widgets. Firstly, I feel the name is enough to confuse me. I had never heard of the term before this course and had no understanding of what they were. The word widget is not a particularly appealing one for me – I’m not even sure why. It just sounds a lot more complex than it actually is.

When I realised that we had to integrate widgets into our blog as part of our course structure I panicked a little. With a little research, however, I realised they may not be as confusing as I initially thought. Widgets are basically like applications, an add on to your blog that sits within the sidebar.

Choosing a widget that was appropriate for my blog was another story. As I have little experience with blogging it was difficult for me to gauge what widgets would be appropriate for my blog. It was also hard to pick widgets that would be relevant to my content. For example, I currently have the ‘instagram view’ widget on my blog. This displays 4 of my most recent instagram photos.

My blog, so far, has little to do with me personally. My posts are obviously written in first narrative and some are related to experiences I’ve had but they don’t really explain or delve too much into who I am as a person. My instagram, however, is definitely much more personal. I post photos of myself, my friends & general life stuff. For this reason I am in two minds about the inclusion of this widget as I feel it conflicts a little with my blog content. It does break up the side bar (which is particularly bland) and adds some visual stimulus.