10 Must have widgets and pages on your Blog

Number of Blogs are increasing day by day and newbies are entering blogosphere to make their blogging debut. So, Not only for the new ones but all those experienced bloggers sometime missout some important things on their blog homepage. However, there are several elements which provide necessary information, offer advisable functions and other traditional blogging components known so far (links to other sites, social connectivity,etc.)

Pages

1. About Page : Many a times, visitor (more than what you’ve written) would like to know about you especially when they like your posts. You need not go in details – Just a short biography about yourself is enough to be known by reader.

2. Form or way to contact : To contact you personally then let it be a request, query or something else; you should have a contact form on your blog. WordPress hosted blogs can have variety of such plugins and other platform can manage to find alternative or simply leave your Email ID.

3. Disclaimer or Legal Notice : In many countries, it is essential to make it known what is done with data provided. This generally includes information about “Privacy policy” and other things which may according to the country.

4. Clear Indication of License for Content : This page is not as essential because if not specifies- your content will be always under traditional copyright Licensening. It means nothing can be done without prior permission from you (Author)

Widgets

5. Search box – It is most essential thing on any webpage which facilitates user to find information on your blog. Using Adsense search box can also make money for you.

6. Category and Tag-Cloud – Categories and Tags are very helpful in finding or navigating any specific topic or keyword on the blog. Tag function is however not available on Blogger platform but still Category widget is always appreciated. Archive according to the period would also solve the purpose of better navigation

7. Subscription Links (by RSS or Email) : It is highly recommended to give vistors two options to subscribe your articles. This helps keeping in touch with new updates on your blog. You can also provide specific feed aggregator’s link to directly add in his account.

8. Blogroll : It shows the interest of author in various fields. It can also show list of similar sites and index of resource documents.

9. Links to other sites you own : If you own more than one website, it should be told to visitors of your blog. You should be the first promotor of your work.

10. Social Network Connectivity : You probably be having your account on Twitter / Facebook, etc. then don’t hide yourslef. Expose it so that visitor can connect you elsewhere on web and it also helps in increasing blog traffic.