Blogging is addictive. It is so satisfying to write a post, lovely in that new theme, adding a different color here, and italics there, emphasizing your feelings behind a certain word. You can add pictures, links to your favorite books, restaurants or people. You can scream and yell. You can tell your deepest darkest secrets and declare your love for someone. It is your world online. Could it get any better?

You bet! Most blogging platforms offer bloggers the ability to customize their blogging space. Customizations range from color choices, custom headers, fonts, code editing, custom templates, and a whole slew of other (endless) customizations. One of the easiest to use, and most attractive customizations available is the widget (plugin, addin, extra).

What’s a widget? Well, Wikipedia defines web widgets as standalone chunks of code that users generally use to enhance their personal web space; it is anything that can be embedded in an HTML webpage. It also notes that a widget is a stand-in word for something manufactured or created (remember High School Econ class?). So basically, widgets are portable pieces of code that you can do anything with (go nuts!).

Although you are a bit limited in widgets and customization in general on most of the free blog platforms, once you move up to the paid or hosted solutions, your supply is almost limitless. The folks at WordPress, and the other platforms as well, have done a bang-up job of creating a seemingly endless supply of these gems. And, if you know your code, you can create your own!

Here are a few of the showstoppers I found on WordPress this afternoon:

BittyBrowser

I admit; I clicked on this one because I thought I was going to see something about little old ladies, but instead I found something much cooler. Bitty browser places a little tiny browser window on your site, allowing you to browse the Web, while not leaving the confines of your site; kind of like Picture-in-Picture for TV. How cool is that? To install, download the widget place it on your blog, and you’re done. Awesome.

LovelyBooks

For the bibliophile (and literary exhibitionist) in each of us. First you setup an account on the LovelyBooks main site listing all of your books to your virtual bookshelf. Next you download the WordPress Plugin. And there it is, your bookshelf displayed on your blog! A note to all of our English-only readers, LovelyBooks’ main site is in German. If you are persistent enough, you can make your way around the site well enough to sign up and download the widget (it’s worth it!), or you can translate the site using Google’s translator, which does a pretty good job, and the language inconsistencies which it uncovers are pretty funny.

VirtualPlantz

Install a virtual, growing plant in the sidebar of your blog. Why? Because it’s neat. Great visitors with greenery.

Aside from the fun widgets listed above there are scads of other widgets that perform more pragmatic functions. Search widgets are one of the biggest categories. Currently there are search widgets available from Google, Technorati, Yahoo and Doogate (and I am sure that there are others). There are also widgets for displaying calendars, widgets for displaying categories (cloud format and otherwise), and widgets for shopping (eBay, Amazon, Etsy). The term widget certainly lives up to its “stand-in” name; widgets can literally do anything! Someone simply has to imagine it, code it, and there you go; a widget doing whatever you want!

So why would you want to use widgets? Well, first of all, they are fun. Second, using widgets can enhance the aesthetics of your blog, making it more attractive to readers. Aesthetics definitely play a role in readership, and widgets can help you make your blog more attractive by allowing you to add images, calendars, categories, and even plants to your site. So why not give them a try? Just like blogging, they are addictive. I promise that there is a widget out there to suit your blog, and if not, build one!