Thing 25: Gotta Have Tools

Ah, yes, widgets and gadgets. In Wordpress, there are plugins. They can be useful, they can be fun, they can be annoying.

Here's what I looked at:

• Disqus: Looks like a neat thing, but clunky install method. Made me nervous to be messing with my entire template file.
• Click Comments: I've never seen this used on an actual blog. It seems very juvenile to me. I don't care for canned comments. I'd prefer real written comments, or none at all.
• Outbrain: Could be useful in some situations (review blogs, for example). I don't want people rating my posts here; there's really no need for it.
• Clustr Maps: OK for the curious, but decided not to use it.
• Typealyzer: Interesting. I got different results for my own blogs than for the group blogs I write for.
  

Didn't bother with:

• Snap previews. I used these in my blog once, but as I visit more and more blogs, I find them to be highly annoying. They just get in the way. If I want to check a link, I just open it in a new tab to look at later.
• Things that talk or have video or play music. Unless my blog has a real need for these, I won't use them.
  

Ultimately added:

• RSS feeds from my other blogs. I used to wonder what good this would do, but now that I write more blogs, I get it. It shows post titles from other blogs I enjoy and/or write.
• Subscription buttons, to make it easy for people to subscribe.
• Google Analytics. This is a very powerful tool, and I use it on my other blogs already. Am waiting to see if it's configured properly, however. Only downfall to this one (besides configuration) is that you can't see current-day stats.
• Add This: Another one I've used before, is useful, and easy to install.
• Recent Comments: Surprised that this isn't in the layout choices. This was very easy to install.

One hour of widget-hunting and I'm done unless I come across something else that looks really good. The benefit of reading a lot of blogs is seeing new things in action.