Widget Weekly

The visitor tracking widget is a useful way to display visitor statistics on the front end of your site, but you may have noticed a sharp decline in its use since the 90's. Why is the visitor tracker on the endangered widgets list? And why are we, at emyspot, keeping it around?

The end of a surprising year is upon us. Start the New Year with a fresh resolution towards excellence. Each day of January get an idea to improve your website explained by the emyspot team straight to your inbox. Enjoy the preview below.

Subscribe to "31 days for excellence"

We added the Instagram widget to our list of interactive widgets in September. We have now updated the the features to allows Instastars and Insta-adept to integrate Instagram account. Discover the new upgraded features to display your Insta videos and photos on your website.

To promote your Facebook page or your Twitter account on your website have become common practice. Social media is a great way to create a community, but also to develop a web presence for your website. Well, we are pleased as punch to announce that you can now include Instagram on your website - Show off a photo or a video with this new Instagram widget !

Propose files for download - it's easy. You can upload files such as spreadsheets, Word documents, or PDFs (Portable Document Files) — with the simple widget and your site's visitors can click a button to download that document for offline use. We have also have a new tutorial that explains offering downloadable files to site visitor's in detail.

Let people know how to contact your business or organisation! Sometimes site visitors want to know only where to find you or how to contact you. With this in mind, emyspot proposes a gadget just for you - the contact details gadget. This gadget displays all the contact details for your company or organisation in a clear and elegant way.

At emyspot making a poll is simple and fun when you make a website - and you don't need to have any special skills, just the questions and hopefully the anwers.

When you use the Directory add-on at emyspot you can easily create a customizable list of the sites you want to network. With the new widgets you can make your directory more dynamic than ever.

We have been coding and working to give you an updated directory add-on and have already had great feedback on these updates. Thank you so much ! One of the main reasons we do what we do is to help make a website easier than ever.  To simplify the array of widgets that we have been updating for the directory lets look at the widgets available.

Some of us have never used Twitter and don't understand the point! Some argue it is the same thing as Facebook... but regardless Twitter is a great means of communicating and quite simply put, addicting. With the easy to integrate widgets you can add your Twitter account to your site and show off your presence on social networks.

The very first step when using this widget is activating the members area. From within your site manager you go to Marketing > Site membersto edit or add your member zone. Here are some more recommendations for taking full advantage of your member space.

The emyspot team has just published a new system to manage comments on your website. Check out Disqus, a third party service that allows for a modern feel comment program. This is extremely useful on your blog, but can be applied to all the add-ons and pages if you choose. Discover the benefits and features of Disqus on emyspot.

Well here we are again, folks – the start of a new year. We are bursting with motivation and plans and goals. Maybe you even made some new year's resolutions for your site to up sales, get a better SEO ranking, or redo your homepage. Here is a widget that shows off all the new stuff you are doing on your site in the new year.

There are two widgets that help you link your Facebook page to your website. Most people have a Facebook page, and if you have not yet made a Facebook page for your activity, association, or yourself, do it.

This week I have music on my mind, as I can't walk down the street without hearing songs of Christmas and cheer. I feel like Billy Mack, where Christmas is all around me and in case you want to add some music to your site, that is fitting to your tastes (maybe not Christmas music) use the mp3 playlist gadget.

Ask and you shall receive

As requested on Welcome to Widget Weekly, I am going to talk about the polished search engine widgets at emyspot. One of my favorite functions is the search bar, it suits my no-nonsense want-it-now persona (unless of course it is for "really important things" like the puppy bowl or boobing around on facebook). When there is no search bar, there is always Ctrl+F for instant gratification. So give us lazy readers what we want and put in a search bar !

With so many widgets, we are going to break down each and explain how it works to the minute detail. The widgets are naturally intuitive, regardless it is nice to have a detailed explanation and see how the widget works and all of its features. On Widget Weekly we are talking about the image slider.

Every other Wednesday we will discover the ins and outs of a new widget. As there are so many to choose from let me know if you want to talk about a certain widget. As we walk through the widgets, don't be alarmed if some writer personality pops out. And as always post questions or comments below !