TrickBlogger: 15 Useful Widgets and Scripts for Blogger

There are many useful widgets and scripts which you could use to add interactivity to your Blogger powered blog. Ranging from lists of your most popular posts to a table of contents which loads above your posts, this article contains 20 of the most useful widgets and scripts you could install own blogs.

Easy Install Widgets

All of the widgets int his section can be added easily to your blog using widget installers.

Top Commentators

Reward your regular contributors by adding this widget which displays a list of the ten most active commentators. You can filter your own name from the list and add this easily using the widget installer.

Add Top Commentators widget to your blog (Originally constructed by GoogleSystem and widgetized by Blogger Buster)

Random Posts

Phydeaux3’s widget allows to to create a link to a random post from your sidebar (or wherever you decide to add this widget in your blog). This is another easy widget to install using the one-click installer on Phydeaux’s site.

Add a random post link to your blog (by Phydeaux3)

Picasa Web Albums

This widget allows you to display recent images from your Picasa web albums account in your sidebar. All you need to do is insert your Picasa username into the input box and click submit to add this to your blog.

Install Picasa web albums widget in your blog

Simple Search Widget

This is a simple search widget which uses the same functions as the search box in the Blogger nav-bar. Unlike Google searches, this is a simple widget which will display all posts matching the queried term in the main posts section of your blog, and can be installed using the one-click widget installer.

Install a simple search form in your blog

Random Messages

Ramani of Hackosphere created this widget which can be used to display one of ten random messages in your Blogger blog. One possible use for this would be to display random testimonials in a business blog, while another would be as a display of random quotes.

There is no need to edit your blog’s template when adding this widget: you can add your own quotes and install this easily in your sidebar using Ramani’s widget installer.

Install a random message widget in your Blogger blog

Useful Scripts (Require Editing of your Blogger Template)

The scripts and customizations referenced in this section will require you to edit your blog’s HTML code. Although they are a little more complicated than the previous set, they are all undoubtedly useful additions to your Blogger powered blog.

This highly useful widget will load a table of your blog’s contents above the main posts section. You can then rearrange this list to sort posts by category, posting date or post title.

It is a little more complicated to install than other widgets as it requires editing some aspects of your template, but Hans offers full and detailed instructions for you to add this easily to your blog.

Tab View Widget

This widget allows you to display your recent posts/comments or posts from specified categories using a “tab-view” widget, like this:
$Hoctro\'s Tab View Widget$

This widget will allow you to save space in your sidebar by adding these important elements in one place and is now becoming a popular feature of Wordpress powered blog designs.

You will need to edit your Blogger template to install this widget, but it’s certainly a useful and functional addition for your Blogger blog. Hoctro offers full instructions for installation and customization in hos explanatory posts.

Learn more and install a tab-view widget in your blog (Created by Hoctro)

Random Rotating Banner/Header Image

Have you ever wanted to add a random banner to your blog’s header? If so, this script will be undoubtedly useful for you!

Unlike other random banner techniques, this technique does not require you to host Javascript files externally. Instead you can achieve this by adding some JavaScript code to your Blogger template and simply link to your banner images (hosted on Flickr or Picassa for example).

Read more and install random banner images (by Freeyasoul Adventure)

This script will display a list of related articles (organized by category) below your posts on item pages. I’ve found this to be a really useful script in my own Blogger blogs as this directs readers to other articles of interest once they have read the current post.

There are two versions of this widget: the first was created by Hoctro but most people find Jackbook’s updated version much easier to use and install.

Display your Post Dates as a Calendar Page

This customization allows you to use a calendar page instead of your regular post date, like this:

This is quite a simple customization to install using JavaScript and some minor changes to your template.

Archive Calendar

Here is another feature commonly found in Wordpress blogs which has been customized for Blogger. Phydeaux3 has created a useful archive calendar widget which readers can use to skip to posts made on a certain date. Dates where posts have been made are highlighted in the calendar, and readers can skip to different months using the easy drop-down selector.

I hope you have found this list of Blogger widgets and scripts to be useful for customizing your own Blogger templates. If you have found other widgets which are particularly useful for Blogger users, please let us know by leaving your comments below.