Spruce Up Your Blog's Sidebar with Library Thing

If you've decided to spruce up your blog with some "goodies" in your sidebar, you're in for a treat, as long as you keep in mind that too many widgets decrease your load speed.  Not good.

For a refresher on how to add third-party tools (widgets) to your Blogger blog, go to Adding a Gadget to Your Blog, or if you prefer, to my previous post, "What's a Widget," for a walk-through.

There are a number of sites offering gadgets for cataloguing and sharing your favorite books with your readers, including:

1.  LibraryThing.
2.  BookJetty.
3.  Goodreads.

I prefer LibraryThing. 

Sign up (taken directly from LibraryThing's website):  Signing up for LibraryThing is fast and easy. All you need is a member name and a password. We do not require any other information.  To sign up on LibraryThing, go to the home page. Create a member name and password. You have the option to add an email to your account. Choose your account type — Personal or Organizational from the drop-down menu. Click Join now.

Your homepage on Library Thing:  Your home page shows announcements, books recently added to your library, local events in your area, your top tags, your collections, and links to much more. You can customize the look of your home page by reordering and showing specific sections of text on the page. Click the customize this page link located next to your member name.

And here's a small sampling of their FAQ page:

1 How do I review a book?
2 How do I rate a book?
3 How do I change the order of my books?
4 How do I subsort by a second column?
5 How do I see other fields, like ISBN or LC Call Number?
6 How do I show my books to my friends?
7 Can I set the display style for other people to view my catalog?
8 The title of my book is spelled wrong, can I change that?
9 How do I change the book cover image, or add a new one?
10 Can I read books on LibraryThing?

After signing up for LibraryThing and entering a list of your favorite books, you can make a clickable "badge" of their covers (using the site's easy instructions) for your blog readers to access the information.

And it's free!

In the near future, I hope to take full advantage of all the tools LibraryThing has to offer, but for now I'm already reaping some of its benefits.  See my side panel for a peek.

(Photo credits:  BLINK some BLUE, by Via Moi; What is LibraryThing? by libraryman)

What's a Widget?

Okay, so what's a widget?  It took me all afternoon, with many twists and turns, plus a few downloads to my home page that I didn't want or need, to get the answer.  Remember, I'm technologically challenged.  That's why I'm sharing with you now.  To save you the trouble I keep getting into to get a simple answer.

The best definition of widget I came across was at a site called Yola.  But I'm not sending you there, because before I knew it, I ended up with an account that I didn't want or need.  Their definition:  "Widgets are chunks of code that allow you to add content to your site without having to write any code yourself."

Now we're talking.

Another site, About.com:  Web Trends, said:  "A widget can be anything from a voting poll to a weather forecast to a list of current headlines to a crossword puzzle.  You can utilize them in your blog to provide an interactive experience for your readers, or you can place them on your personalized start page to get at information you want to see on a regular basis."

Okay, so now how do you find a widget and put it on your blog?

For that (after downloading a bunch of widgets to my home page that I didn't want or need), I lucked upon a website called Blogger Tips and Tricks, which lead me through the steps in adding a widget called a Visitor Counter to my blog.

I printed and followed the simple instructions and then, after signing up for an account at StatCounter that I did want and need, I got a free invisible Web tracker onto my blog.

Wow!  Me, the type of person Blogging for Dummies was written for.

Blooper tip:  Blogger Tips and Tricks still uses the old terms Layout instead of Design and Add A Page Element instead of Add and Arrange a Page Element, but otherwise the information is still current. 

New problem.  Now that I had StatCounter, I didn't know how to use it.  I went back to Blogger Tips and Tricks, but after the instruction "Click Save and your visitor counter is successfully installed" the post ended.

Oh my.

Coffee break.

After another hour searching the web and scratching my head, I realized that I needed to go back to StatCounter and log in to get the "statistics" on visitors to my blog.  

If you want further practice, here are four more ways to put a widget onto Blogger.

1. Go to How to Add A Widget to Blogger and follow the instructions there.
2. Or:  Find the widget code for a free Library Thing Widget for your blog at Library Thing.  Copy it (Ctrl C), then go to your Blogger Dashboard, then to Design, then Add and Arrange Page Elements, then Add a Gadget, scroll down to HTML/JavaScript, put in the title (StatCounter), past the code into the content field (Ctrl V), and Save.
3. Just for fun, go to The Cutest Blog on the Block and click on Accessories and then Blinkees.  Choose and click on the one you like, copy the code (Ctrl C), go to your Blogger Dashboard and follow the instructions above.  Then all you have to do is view your blog to see the results.
4. Go to Online Social Networking to get 10 types of Widgets for your Blog.

Enjoy!