Hey everyone, maybe you noticed that BUZZYEAH’s left sidebar looks a little cleaner today. Or not. I guess it’s your opinion. Let me know in the comments.
Why does it need a guide?
It doesn’t.
But, I was bored and did some user-interface tweaking and added a few new things. And, I think that gives me an excuse to post this small guide.
We will start from the top and work our way down the BUZZYEAH sidebar widget by widget.
One: “About This Blog” widget. This lets you know who authors this blog, provides a link to an extensive about page and also provides a direct link to my email address.
Two: “RSS Feed” widget. This lets my fancy pants readers subscribe to BUZZYEAH’s feed in their preferred feed reader.
Three: “Email Subscription” widget. This lets my dedicated readers receive email updates the morning after I post new content.
Four & Five: “Recent Posts” and “Recent Comments” widgets. These are pretty self-explanatory. They each provide my five most recent posts and comments, respectively.
Six: “Search BUZZYEAH” widget. This is a Google Gadget called Custom Search Engine. It lets you search both my blog and the Internet (I don’t want to limit my readers to my small blog). (Update: I changed this widget to search only my blog. Why? Because it benefits my readers in providing narrower, cleaner results. Most of them already have their preferred search engine added to their browser.)
Seven-Twelve: All these widgets are self-explanatory. Fun game: Click the links and see where they go.
Thirteen: “Popular Pages Today” widget. This is a Feedjit widget that provides the ten most-popular BUZZYEAH posts/pages in the past 24 hours.
Fourteen: “Recent Readers” widget. This is a MyBlogLog widget that shows you the profiles of recent MyBlogLog readers on my site.
It’s great because it lets you discover and connect with other BUZZYEAH readers. When you click on a recent readers’ face it takes you to their profile and shows you other blogs they’ve been reading and other communities they’re apart of. (Update: I removed this widget for now. Will re-add it when BUZZYEAH has more MyBlogLog readers.)
Fifteen: “Add BUZZYEAH Expertise” widget. This is a Google Subscribed Links widget. BUZZYEAH readers can subscribe to it and it will add BUZZYEAH expertise to their searches that BUZZYEAH has expertise in. (Update: I removed this widget for now. Don’t think it really adds that much too reader search results.)
For instance, if one of my readers subscribes to this widget and then searches Google for “personal genomics” they will get normal Google results and the fourth search result will be BUZZYEAH’s expertise on the specific search term.
Note: BUZZYEAH’s Subscribed Link will only show up in your search results if we have expertise on the specific search term.
Check it out, I searched for “health 2.0″ and BUZZYEAH’s Subscribed Link showed up in my Google search results:
Probably because of all my recent posts on Dr. Jay Parkinson and his new “health 2.0″ project.
Hope you enjoyed this small, unneeded guide. Let me know if you have any comments or suggestions for BUZZYEAH’s left sidebar.
