Blog Tips

In the beginning of writing this blog, I wrote a post on how to clean up your sidebar, which included removing plugins and widgets that are considered unnecessary. However, I’d like to write some more on that topic and why it isn’t necessary bad to have more widgets and plugins.

Plugins, built for installing through the back end of your blog platform add functionality, which wouldn’t be possible in the small footprint that the blog software must be in. In this sense, they are beneficial, and can completely transform the way you blog. Not having enough plugins would make it more difficult, in certain situations, to do what needs to be done. They are tools, and tools that must be used in order to save time.

On the other hand, widgets, which generally appear in your sidebar, are almost necessary, unless you have an extremely simple layout for your site. Many of the world’s most popular blogs have a rather “cluttered” sidebar, due to the fact that ads and social networking utilities are used. Without these, the sites likely wouldn’t have reached the levels they did. 

Designing a site, you should start with the essentials, and as your blog continues to grow, you should continually try to optimize your site. If a plugin is able to do multiple tasks, choose that one, versus several that only carry out one operation.

Your Turn - Do you feel that you under-utilize or over-utilize plugins and widgets? Is it possible to create a “balance” of them?

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