More Widgets For Your Blog
Everyone loves widgets right? They allow you to add neat features to your blog and really make it your own. They are universal, because you can use them on all different themes, so no matter which theme you’ve used to represent your own personal style, widgets can help you round out the features that make your blog tick. Some of WordPress.com’s newer features like Following and Liking have needed some widget-love, so we’ve whipped up a few new ones to help you out. All of these widgets can be used immediately and added to one of your sidebars under Appearance → Widgets.
Blogs I Follow
The first widget, named Blogs I Follow, allows you to display a list of the blogs that you are following via the WordPress.com Reader. You can display the list as a grid of images representing the blogs or just a series of links. This widget is perfect for introducing your readers to the blogs that inspire and interest you.
Posts I Like
Next up, the Posts I Like widget displays an image grid or a linked list of posts that you have liked recently. This widget is a great way to expose your readers to specific posts and content that you really enjoy. It’ll stay automatically updated by only showing the most recent content you have liked.
My Community
The new My Community widget allows you to highlight all of the activity happening on your blog. You can show people who have commented, liked, or followed your blog, or any combination of the three.
Gravatar Profile
We have also added a Gravatar Profile widget that will automatically pull in your Gravatar profile information including your photo, bio, verified services, and custom links. There’s no need to type out your information again when you can automatically display it using Gravatar. Drop this widget in your sidebar and introduce yourself to your readers!
Top Posts & Pages
In addition to the four brand new widgets above, we have also expanded the functionality of the Top Posts & Pages widget. You can now toggle between measuring top posts by views or by likes. You can also choose to display the list as a simple text list, a list with images, or a more visual grid of larger images.
We hope you enjoy these new widget choices. Let us know what you think in the comments and be sure to continue to let us know what kind of widgets you’re interested in!
Jul 17th at 4:20 pm
ohhh! these are great widget!!!
Jul 17th at 4:35 pm
Love the community widget. Well done.
Jul 17th at 4:43 pm
Very cool! Love the new widgets. I’m wondering though, if there is a way that I can control which blogs show up in the “Blogs I Follow” widget. I’d love to display the ones that REALLY inspire me and that I love…but not necessarily all of the ones that I follow. Does that make sense?
Jul 17th at 7:20 pm
If you’re looking for a manually-curated list of links, then the Links Widget might be a better option.
Jul 17th at 4:45 pm
More widgets? SWEET! Don’t use many on my website, but the ones I do use are VITAL to bringing more people to the website.
Jul 17th at 4:48 pm
implemented… Posts I like & Blogs I follow. Was waiting for these
Also looking forward to a organization/search/order/tool for the history of my likes…
Jul 18th at 3:20 pm
If you look at the WordPress.com Reader (wordpress.com) you can view the history of your likes.
Jul 17th at 4:51 pm
OMG! Those’re what I need for my blog. So amazing!♥
Jul 17th at 4:52 pm
LOVE the idea of a “blogs I follow” widget! Now I don’t have to feel guilty about not having a blogroll!
Jul 17th at 5:03 pm
I’m in love with the idea of a “Blogs I follow” widget — so much cooler than a Blogroll!
Jul 17th at 5:03 pm
Very cool! What about a blog (like ours) with multiple authors? Is there “Posts WE Like”? “Blogs WE Follow”? Or who is “I”? TY!
Jul 17th at 7:18 pm
These new widgets are “multi-widget friendly”, so you can add one of each for each author if you like. For Blogs I Follow, each author would need to add their own. For Posts I Like the admin can add one for each and select the author from the list in the settings.
Jul 17th at 5:58 pm
Good one! Like it a lot – It’s actually useful to me to see the links on my blog rather than having to go through to the pages of lists.
Jul 17th at 6:08 pm
These are some beautiful and friendly widgets!
Jul 17th at 6:10 pm
Does the ‘blogs I follow’ gizmo automatically update and show the heading of the latest posting in that blog, like a dynamic blog-roll? That is one feature I would loooovvvvee.
Jul 17th at 7:17 pm
Currently that widget shows the title of the blog, not the most recent post. That’s an interesting idea though, something we may roll in as an option in the future — thanks!
Jul 17th at 6:16 pm
These widgets are fantastic. They allow to became much more sociable. WELL done!!
I was looking for something like this!!
Thanks a lot!
Jul 17th at 6:21 pm
Nice widgets! I’ll have to give them a whirl.
Jul 17th at 6:26 pm
Interesting stuff. Are top viewed/rated posts/pages based on total statistics for past week/month/all time for the blog? Last time I tested this, it seemed limited in retrospective time frame..meaning it didn’t go back very far in time.
I guess using alot of different widgets on 1 blog might affect the screen uploading time for a user?
Jul 17th at 7:22 pm
Stats are based on the last few days worth of traffic, so they will “stay current” with what is currently popular, rather than just all-time numbers. Using lots of widgets (especially ones that load images) will indeed make your blog take a bit longer to load, but we do our best to make everything as fast as possible.
Jul 18th at 11:10 am
Thanks for this answer!
Jul 17th at 6:30 pm
Quite often, now, I think… how slowly and gradually WordPress is making us masters of our blogs. So interactive, user-friendly widgets this time too. Thanks for showing us the light in our climbing paths.
Jul 17th at 6:31 pm
Top Post and Pages is really good; however, it would help if it also picks up a YouTube snapshot in the grid. Currently, it is not picking up any image from the post if it contains a YouTube embed shortcode.
Jul 17th at 6:45 pm
Blogs I follow is a great add, and the tiny icons help too!
Jul 17th at 7:19 pm
I’m liking the Blogs I Follow and the Gravatar Profile widgets. I’ll be trying them out!
Jul 17th at 7:31 pm
Really nice updates! Especially ‘Blogs I Follow’ and ‘Top Posts & Pages’.
Jul 17th at 7:31 pm
great widgets! thank you.
Jul 17th at 7:50 pm
Nice job.
Jul 17th at 7:50 pm
As ever, a great set of widgets to enhance our blogs!
Jul 17th at 7:55 pm
Oh, yeah. These are some awesome additions to WP. It makes me want to play around with my blog again.
One feature that I wish carried over to WP.org from WP.com is the like feature.
Jul 17th at 8:08 pm
I’d also love to have a widget showing “Blogs I Follow” that leads by most recently updated… I’ve had a terrible time fiddling with RSS feeds for that, and something simple and streamlined would make all the difference.
Jul 17th at 8:16 pm
Thank you very very much !!!
Jul 17th at 8:16 pm
Are these new services available to self-host WordPress users via JetPack?
Jul 17th at 8:23 pm
The Gravatar Profile widget will be available soon, the others will be a little further off because they require some additional development before they can work “outside” of WordPress.com
Jul 17th at 8:25 pm
Thanks!!! great widget!!!
Jul 17th at 8:39 pm
This is really good that wp provides new widgets.
Jul 17th at 8:40 pm
I found the widgets very useful and user-friendly. I also loved the Gravatar Profile. It is quite exciting and it will be very useful for me as I have my profile in various sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, My Space, Indian Kalakar, Shtyle.fm, Netlog, Orkut, Flickr, Google+, Surtarang Surtarang via Google + and other sites.
Jul 17th at 9:11 pm
Great widgets, hope we get more in the future!
Jul 17th at 9:19 pm
I love the addition of images in the Top Posts and Pages – it looks great, thanks!
Jul 17th at 9:23 pm
Great Fun! Love the ‘Blogs I follow’ and top posts.
Jul 17th at 9:38 pm
I try to help my followers attract more readers to their blogs (that’s why I do a Use Me and Abuse Me Day every month), so using these widgets will provide another opportunity for my subscribers to click on other blogger’s links to check them out! Love it! Another way to build the WordPress Community! Thank you WordPress!
Jul 17th at 11:13 pm
Thank you very much! I like the ‘Blogs I follow’ widget.
Jul 17th at 11:21 pm
YIPPEE!!! These are FAN-FREAKIN-TAST-TIC widget additions! THANK YOU!!!
Whoo hooo….
Jul 17th at 11:41 pm
Widgets are purposeful interjections to a blog’s presentation. Gotta love ‘em!
Jul 17th at 11:54 pm
I was excited to see you were adding functionality to the “Top Posts & Pages” widget but was disappointed because it did not add the function I was looking for…
Can you please add the ability to toggle the “Top Posts & Pages” widget to show either just “top posts” or “top pages”. I really want to use this widget but can’t use it now since the pages on my blog are getting more views then specific posts – I dont need another page bar.
Thank you for constantly updating and working on making things even better – Keep it up!
Jul 18th at 1:41 am
Have I told you I love you lately?
Jul 18th at 2:08 am
Problem with Community widget. Just removed it from my blog.
Jul 18th at 3:22 pm
What problems are you having?
Jul 19th at 12:32 am
42 people showed up even though I told it to show 50. Even the top commenters weren’t showing up.
Jul 19th at 3:30 pm
Right now we only display recent commenters / likers / followers. In the future we hope to offer “top commenters”. We try to show about 50, but based on the code we can’t promise we will always pull that #.
Jul 18th at 2:09 am
Sweet! Thank you so much! The enhancement to the Top Posts & Pages gave a new burst of color to my blog and is also a good solution to my dilemma about choosing a theme (I’m using Chateau) that only shows one full post on the homepage when the images included in each post are a big enticement to my readers.
Jul 18th at 2:09 am
Each of the widgets has its own functions and it’s very useful. It’s nice to see them on my blog.:)
Jul 18th at 2:09 am
GREAT! Thanks so much!
Jul 18th at 2:27 am
LOVE THIS ADDITIONS! I’ll be trying them asap.
Jul 18th at 2:34 am
It feels like Christmas! A drop of goodies from the chimney right to our carpet of blogging world. Thanks for ever-progressing updates!
Jul 18th at 2:54 am
Is “My Community” widget can be used as some kind of guest book where visitors can leave comment as well?
Jul 18th at 5:11 pm
The “My Community” widget simply shows recent commenters, likers, and followers. If you want some kind of guest book, you could create a page with comments open and some of these commenters will be displayed in the “My Community” widget.
Jul 18th at 3:05 am
The milestone. I know that’s new, but what if it has options to show time in days or month, and if the event is closer, in moving clock – hr:mn:sc. Also, by adding icon to it, maybe. Even, the crazier option, to show the milestone at the blog’s header, but its possible right?
Jul 18th at 3:12 am
These are wonderful wonderful additions to my blog now!
Thanks a lot!
Jul 18th at 3:48 am
I’ll definitely be adding the Gravatar profile widget, thanks.
Jul 18th at 3:52 am
These are great widgets!!! Applied in my blog! Perfect! Thanks! =)
Jul 18th at 4:53 am
yay! community widget is cool…thanks
Jul 18th at 5:15 am
cool widget but I prefer random post showing list posts widget, can you make it?
Jul 18th at 6:34 am
amazing widgets its very useful
Jul 18th at 6:57 am
Wow, these things are great
Jul 18th at 7:40 am
Wow…. so many new cool widgets!!! I can’t pick one since my sidebar is too crowded already. Bummer…..
Jul 18th at 9:51 am
Widget of last modified post, please…
Jul 18th at 9:52 am
Great widgets! I like them!
Jul 18th at 9:58 am
Brilliant, I love the top two!
For the top posts / top likes on my own page – is there a way to change the ‘master’ image that it shows? It doesn’t always seem to be the first one in the post, and I’d like to change it if possible.
Jul 18th at 3:17 pm
If you set a featured image (on the right side of the post screen) we will use this image first.
Jul 19th at 9:44 am
Thanks for the reply.
My theme doesn’t seem to support it, is there any way I can request it from the theme creator, or any way to find which themes have the feature so i can switch to a new one?
Jul 19th at 3:24 pm
Which theme are you using? Most themes should support widgets.
Jul 19th at 8:16 pm
I was using albeo but it didn’t support feature images. Found the search function in themes to include ones with feature images, so happily switched over to liquorice now
Jul 18th at 10:39 am
I know it’s unbelievable, but some people (ahem) follow blogspot blogs. How do I integrate those ones into the “blogs I follow” widget? I know there’s the option to just display a blogroll but then that doesn’t look as nice (e.g. with the grid…). Any solution for including blogs hosted by other providers than wordpress? Thanks!
Jul 18th at 3:12 pm
The Blogs I Follow widget gets its content from your WordPress.com Reader. To follow a non-WordPress.com site in the reader, check this document.
Jul 19th at 8:28 am
Hi Tim, thanks for your help. The blogs from other sites than wordpress are shown as *blank* on both the list and grid view using the new widget. Is there anything I can do?
Andrea
Jul 20th at 3:04 pm
I’ll take a look at this and get it fixed. Thanks for letting us know!
Jul 18th at 10:42 am
i think many of us have waited for widgets like these for a long time. thanks!
Jul 18th at 10:48 am
These are fantastic! I love the new and improved top posts and pages widget. I was wondering, since wordpress.com users cannot use third-party outside widgets like linkwithin, will WordPress be developing a similar widget? Which shows up at the end of the post, linking to similarly tagged or categorized posts within your blog.
Jul 18th at 5:18 pm
We don’t have anything planned at this time, but I’ve marked down the suggestion for a related posts widget.
Jul 18th at 10:55 am
Great!!! Thank you
Jul 18th at 11:35 am
what I would love is an instagram widget just like the flickr widget you have.
Jul 18th at 11:41 am
I love the idea of this and just put the blogs I follow widget on my blog – however I’ve now taken it down because the images are absolutely huge and really (in my opinion) detract attention away from the rest of the blog. Is there any chance that we could have a choice of size (as in, for instance, the who’s recent comments widget? Also, how about a widget for blogs that follow me? That would be great!
Jul 18th at 5:19 pm
Val, which theme are you using where the images are huge? We attempt to scale the images down so they shouldn’t be big, but it’s possible there is something happening.
To show blogs that follow you, you could add the new “My Community” widget, and just select to show followers and not commenters or likers. These are users/blogs that follow you.
Jul 18th at 12:02 pm
These widgets are great! I definitely love the expansion of the Top Posts & Pages widget because I want to show based on views rather than likes. I will be testing this one out! I would love to see a widget that allows me to link back to related posts within my blog so that I can keep the reader engaged. Does this exist already? Thanks for these updates!
Jul 18th at 3:16 pm
Thanks for the feedback! A related posts widget does not currently exist but I’ve noted your suggestion!
Jul 18th at 12:19 pm
Nice work, thanks guys.
Just a feedback : can you please improve the twitter widget ? Because i can’t really personalise it like i want, thanks !
Jul 18th at 3:14 pm
What other options are you looking for to personalize the widget?
Jul 18th at 3:55 pm
https://twitter.com/about/resources/widgets choose things like dimensions, colors etc…
Jul 18th at 12:36 pm
i say thank you to the developers.
Jul 18th at 12:57 pm
I wanted to thank you all for your hard work for producing these new tools and widgets for our use. It is greatly appreciated! If anyone has not told you that your time and effort spent making our lives better makes you wonderful – let me be the first. BRAVO! All My Best, Melinda Le Baron
Jul 18th at 1:03 pm
I’ve just realised I can show followers with the community widget! Brilliant!
Jul 18th at 1:20 pm
Awesome widgets!!!
Jul 18th at 1:34 pm
Great widgets!
I love the “My Community” one; it’s very useful! Thanks WordPress
I have a suggestion for a widget. What if we had a widget that showed who liked our posts on Facebook (using their Facebook profile), I think that would be cool!
Jul 18th at 3:13 pm
Thanks for the feedback. Have you checked out the Facebook Likebox widget?
Jul 18th at 4:04 pm
Yes, I checked out the Facebook Likebox widget. Unfortunately, I don’t like the concept of it. I dislike how it requires users to have a Facebook page; I wouldn’t want to have the hassle of maintaining a page solely for my blog.
The widget is sensible for professional bloggers or companies, but it’s not very useful for personal bloggers, in my opinion.
I was looking for something that would highlight Facebook likes on posts on a blog. I think that would be really neat.
Jul 18th at 1:55 pm
I love widgets.. still waiting for a Pinterest Feed widget:D
Jul 18th at 2:10 pm
Great stuff, especially fond of the new “Top Posts & Pages” display options (e.g., the “list with images” option). Any chance of adding similar options to the “Recent Posts” widget in the future?
Jul 18th at 2:37 pm
Awesome widgets! Just wanted to know, “will there be a audio widget in which people can play like a certain ‘song of the day’?”
Jul 18th at 8:21 pm
Thanks
No plans currently for an audio widget, though I’ve noted your suggestion. You can also always make suggestions on our Ideas forum, too.
Jul 18th at 3:18 pm
Very cool! I’m excited to try these out! I hope I don’t run out out of space on my page
Jul 18th at 4:41 pm
Are these new widgets only available those that use WordPress.com for hosting? I am not seeing the new widgets in my Widgets dashboard and I have a different hosting account?
Jul 18th at 4:47 pm
We’ll be offering the Gravatar Profile widget in Jetpack soon and the others will be in Jetpack in the future, after some more development work.
Jul 18th at 4:54 pm
Thanks – very clear and user friendly.
Jul 18th at 5:22 pm
Love the changes for Top Posts, but like Bakerama – using the top photo in the post would work best . With the Quintas theme – I can’t find the option for feature image (I did use it with the 2011 theme, it’d change the header image). Checked right and left side with edit post open, clicked on the picture itself and it isn’t within those options either. Before you had the option to publicize to FB, I’d begun using Networked blogs for that and it always takes the top photo – a lot of us may be writing posts thinking that’ll be the “go to” photo as different options come online. If there’s a way to use Featured Image with Quintas – please let me know and I will go back and re-edit all the old posts (no small task with a two year old blog).
Jul 18th at 5:28 pm
@Justin Shreve – thanks for your reply. I’m using Fruit Shake with a very carefully created background and header plus image mapped links in the footer, so I don’t want huge gravatar images distracting people from it. I have, by the way, added the community widget now with my followers – which is great as the images aren’t too big.
Jul 18th at 7:16 pm
Would be great if the Blogs I Follow widget could show a picture from the latest post on their site. It looks like blogspot.co.uk allow this.
Jul 19th at 2:30 pm
That’s a neat idea, we’ll look into it – thanks!
Jul 18th at 7:34 pm
Great ideas THANK YOU WORDPRESS!
Jul 18th at 8:29 pm
Thank you! The new features are just awesome!
Jul 18th at 9:09 pm
I want to improve the blog…there is an audio widget please?
Jul 19th at 3:32 pm
We don’t currently have an audio widget. You could use the Audio shortcode (#1 at http://en.support.wordpress.com/audio/) and use the shortcode inside a text widget http://en.support.wordpress.com/widgets/text-widget/.
Jul 20th at 8:05 am
Thanks you Justin.- Gracias
Jul 18th at 9:10 pm
As someone else commented, I’d also like a “Blogs I Follow” widget that ranks blogs by “most recently updated.” That would be very useful for my readers/followers. With the ability to limit the number of blogs showing automatically in the widget, with a “more” button if someone wants to see all blogs followed. With some blogs I follow, the writers have stopped updating their blogs, but they still follow and visit me, so I don’t want to remove them from my blogroll. However, their old blogs do clutter up my blogroll!
I really like how the top posts is based on recent data. Over time the “all time top visited posts” don’t change much. But visits to posts over the past few days can be very dynamic. This makes the top posts widget change frequently and makes the blog feel busy. I put that widget in a prominent top spot. Thank you!
Jul 19th at 1:53 am
I’m still unable to view “Like this” from the home page. I see categories, tags, etc. but not the like button. Help.
Jul 19th at 3:25 pm
Look under Settings and Sharing in your dashboard, and then for the “Show buttons on” option. Make sure Front Page, etc is checked.
Jul 19th at 6:21 am
Fantastic array of widgets for our blogging delight. Thank you!
Jul 19th at 8:54 am
Hi, I might have a problem with The Community and Blogs I Follow widgets and I don’t know how to fix it.
I do follow 6 blogs but only 5 of them do appear in the grid and The Community widget shows up nothing. Anything I can do to make them work ? or is this the way they must work ?
Jul 19th at 2:20 pm
If you’re using the grid view and we can’t find a good way to display them, then sometimes we don’t show them at all. If you want to make sure that they show, then use the list view. The Community widget shows people who have commented/liked/followed *your* blog.
Jul 19th at 3:01 pm
There are people that are following my blog, that gave “Like”s to posts I’ve made and also there are some people that made comments on my blog. I presume you’re telling me they are supposed to show up in this widget. I would be happy to find a way to make this widget “The Community” available on my blog….
I’ve checked my page again and you were right, both of them show nothing.
As a result I changed the widget ” Blogs I follow ” to show links. Now I can see this widget, it shows 5 links. It’s curious I have a number one but with no link.
I guess it’s a matter of time to get fixed.
Anyway it’s a great idea.
Thank you for your time and for trying to help me.
Jul 19th at 9:22 am
Top Posts widget is just… AWESOME !
Jul 19th at 9:44 am
Oh God… wordpress is going better and better.. love this move !
Jul 19th at 1:29 pm
Dear WordPress Engineers, it seems that the Top Post widget is totally broken. It has been fluctuating back and forth with the number of count it shows, and now I see that it only shows 1 post even though i have selected it to show 10. Please check this ASAP.
Jul 19th at 3:23 pm
If you have selected ‘views’ as the option for the Top Posts widget, then it looks at posts with a certain number of views in the past 48 hours. It’s possible that the widget is only finding a few to display. Likes will show a constant set.
Jul 19th at 1:47 pm
amazing widgets, look forward to trying them on my blog ^^
Jul 19th at 3:44 pm
I’m already using the top posts and pages widget and am very interested in trying out some of the others. They look awesome. Thanks very much for these great new additions!
Jul 19th at 4:55 pm
These are great widgets !
Jul 19th at 7:46 pm
—- If you have selected ‘views’ as the option for the Top Posts widget, then it looks at posts with a certain number of views in the past 48 hours. It’s possible that the widget is only finding a few to display. Likes will show a constant set. —-
Hi, I’m not sure if I’m following. I have not selected or unselected anything. Only thing I did is change the widget to show grid images. Besides, it was working fine up until earlier yesterday and before. Could you explain what you mean when you say “certain number of views”? If the widget is selected to show 10 posts, than it should show 10 posts. No?
This widget is extremely important for my blog. If it cannot show the number of popular posts I wish to highlight, than what good would be its use? I hope you can help fix this problem otherwise it would be a terrible loss.
Aug 1st at 3:06 pm
The view option has always pulled the same top posts that are displayed in the stats section of your dashboard. Posts with lots of views in the past 48 hours. Depending on how many views your posts have gotten in the last 2 days, there may not be 10 posts worth to display.
Jul 19th at 9:52 pm
I like the new My Community but found a couple bugs when trying to use it. 1) I noticed that it puts our own Gravatar in the community list because of a reply to a comment. It would be best if you could somehow omit our own Gravatar. 2) I tried a workaround on this and unchecked blog comments in the choices of what is pulled from to appear in the community list. When I did that it showed a message on our blog saying we didn’t have anyone to put on this list and do we want to learn how to get people, etc. That message shouldn’t be there. I went back and put a check mark beside “commenters” and the message went away.
Jul 20th at 3:00 pm
1) Thanks for pointing that out. I’ve noted that ane we’ll take a look at it.
2) That message should only show up to you (or other logged in users who have admin access to the blog). It is a default message to help get the widget set up; it should not show up to your users.
Jul 19th at 10:17 pm
Top posts and pages widget is awesome. Thanks!
Jul 20th at 7:33 am
wooohoo! : ) love this !
Jul 20th at 1:21 pm
I have notice a lot of blogs have the LIKE THIS widget or plugin. Can I use this with a wordpress.com blog? If so, how can I find it.
Jul 20th at 3:01 pm
If you’re referring to the Facebook Like option, then you can add a widget for that by following these instructions: http://en.support.wordpress.com/facebook-integration/#facebook-like-box
We also have sharing buttons which you can enable at the bottom of each post: http://en.support.wordpress.com/sharing/
Jul 20th at 2:50 pm
Really like the My Community widget and am using it on my blog. What I would REALLY like is a widget with a grid option that displays MY FOLLOWERS with link to their sites. This rewards them for following me. Currently I list them in my blogroll and have to manually add each one. Since I posted a sticky post saying that I will list each follower’s blog site in my blogroll the number of followers has doubled. It is nice to show a photo grid of who I follow, but I would rather have something to offer as an appreciation/reward for those who follow me. Thank you!!
Jul 20th at 2:56 pm
The My Community widget should do this already. If you check only the “include activity from followers” option, you’ll get a listing of only users who have followed your site.
Jul 20th at 3:05 pm
Ahh I see! You guys are so clever, I knew there was something I missed. Thank you very much!
Jul 20th at 5:11 pm
this is pretty cool. particularly the gravatar widget.