Christina Sponias writes:

Hi Chris!

This is nice and quite useful! This is the solution I was looking for, because I wanted to show to my visitors which my recent articles are besides the entire article collection divided in my own categories.

I have in my home page a square (my EzineArticles Expert banner) and my Platinum Member banner!
If someone clicks that square he or she can see the last articles, but the widget is much better. I like it!

I’m improving my site now and this will be part of its new look. Thank you!

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Jeff Herring - The Internet Article Guy writes:

Hi Chris!

Well done, very well done!

The uses are many, and I’ve already got mine on my GreatArticleMarketingBlog.com

Seems like each time you make EzineArticles better it makes us better…

Jeff

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Chinmay Chakravarty writes:

Thanks Chris

It’s brilliant instant overpowering. I saw it happening before my eyes.

EZA, Ahoy! I’m learning a trick everyday.

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Francois du Toit writes:

Looks very promising Chris!

Jeff, I had a look at your blog and I think the widget looks great. It really compliments your blog.

Francois

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P.Pal writes:

Chris, Not many people read this blog so it would be really beneficial if you could put a link to the widgets on the front page of EzineArticles. Most website owners are already looking for something like this.

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Teli Adlam writes:

I have to say, this is awesome. I love the idea of being able to promote articles via a website widget. (Hmm, I’m already thinking of ways this can be turned into a WordPress plugin…;) )

~ Teli

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Karen Cook writes:

Hi Chris!

Oh my…I love this idea!
Guess this means I know what I’ll be doing tomorrow after by day job!

You keep surprising us. One innovative dude!

Karen

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Lance Winslow writes:

Every single author should set this up immediately in order to increase their expert status, this is great for building your personal brand. WOW, that is cool! I am blown away, this is brilliant and a great new concept.

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Lalitha Brahma writes:

Hi Chris

Thanks for this great tool!

Lalitha
lalithabrahma.com

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Carol Smith writes:

This is my first visit. Just started writing articles. There has been a running discussion one of the forums about EzineArticles. Can you publish the article in other directories? Can you publish the article on your own website or blog?

This widget seems to answer at least the last question. If the article is original and belongs to you, you can put it in your blog or on your website.

Since using the widget assumes that the article has been published by eZine to be included, does this mean that I should first submit to eZine and then other directories after your approval? The same for my blog?

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Christopher M. Knight writes:

Carol,

1) Your articles do not need to be exclusive to EzineArticles.com; but they do need to be exclusive to you personally… meaning, they are not PLR or non-exclusive rights content.

The widget doesn’t answer the last question because it’s no more than an RSS feed in a Javascript envelope to make it easy for webmasters to slap it into their template in seconds.

2) Yes, submit first to EzineArticles.com. :) What? You thought I’d say otherwise? Submit wherever you get the most bang for your content contribution.

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Christopher M. Knight writes:

All,

We just added this to your Membership Interface.

You’ll find it under AUTHOR TOOLS, CREATE A WIDGET.

We’re still tweaking it daily thanks to a dozen reports about the way our members needed various things fixed with it — to make it more compatible with various CSS issues.

Some asked for a non-Javascript version so they could add this to your their MySpace or FB sites? This Widget is purely an Ajax Javascript thing and would be completely a different thing if we didn’t do it in Javascript.

One cool feature just added yesterday: The ability to change the colors of your theme to match your website! How cool is that?

We’re going to tweak on it for a few more days before releasing it to our entire base of members.

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Christopher M. Knight writes:

OOOOO OOOOO OOOOOh,

I forgot to share this important FYI:

Because it’s Javascript, the search engines WILL NOT index it when they find it on your website!

This is exactly what you want.

Why? Because then adding it to your site will not cause any real or perceived duplicate content penalty.

For your audience, the Widget exists….but any search engine visiting your site, doesn’t see it or index it.

That’s one of the reasons why we love Javascript for this Widget.

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Karen Cook writes:

Hi Chris,

Finally using the wonderful widget. First two blogs went ticketdy-boo!

Been trying to add 15 home based business articles to my Virtual Agent blog and NO WAY!
All I get is the EZ box saying no articles by this author.

I went over and over it, redoing to no avail.

What am I doing wrong with this one?

Karen

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Christopher M. Knight writes:

Karen,

That’s weird, didn’t work for me either:

Ok, our dev team is on it.

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Christopher M. Knight writes:

Karen,

We found and fixed the error.

Please try again.

In addition, we re-ordered the category drop down to be in alphabetical order for easier category identification. :)

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Karen Cook writes:

You are the king of the world, Chris!

Thanks to you and your fast-as-lightning dev team for fixing problems…pronto!

Works like a charm!

Karen

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Christopher M. Knight writes:

All,

We just spent the last 3+ weeks perfecting this widget, adding new features (such as the customization settings that help the widget to match your site layout) and improving compatibility based on user feedback.

Thanks for your suggestions & input on this fun project!

If you’ve implemented the EzineArticles Widget on your website, I invite you to post a blog comment on this thread to show us your implementation. Just post your URL in the body of the blog comment along with telling us where to find it. Most are putting it in their left or right navigation above or below the fold.

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Lalitha Brahma writes:

Hi Chris

Thanks for the wonderful add ons. I started my blog recently and I placed the Widget on the right hand side. Here it is
http://lalithasimpleology.blogspot.com/

By the way, as we add articles, will they be automatically added to the widget?

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Christopher M. Knight writes:

Lalitha,

YES!

Every time you add a new article, the widget is updated as soon as the article is accepted/approved and live on the site.

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Debbie LaChusa writes:

Hi Chris,

What a great idea … I have already added custom widgets to my two websites at
http://www.10stepmarketing.com/freearticles.htm
http://www.6figureworkathomemom.com/free-stuff.html

Next I’ll add to my blog!

Thanks for making this SO easy and making it possible to customize the widget to match our sites!

I’m a little behind on my article writing so I guess this will serve as an incentive to get writing!

Debbie

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Brandi writes:

I love this! It is one of the most unique and quick ways I’ve seen to add an expert’s authority to your website and NOT get penalized for duplicate content.

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Majelis writes:

Hi Chris

You are a truly creative fellow, Chris. Karen is not exaggerating when she says you are king of the world. I think this new innovation speaks louder than bragging about your platinum status with a mere small box banner. It is not only informative but also decorative. I need to change template first before implementing this widget. Thanks again Chris.

Best Regards,

Majelis

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92260 writes:

Well, I have to admit, Chris is a pretty great guy and has built something that is of value to all. This is just one of so many innovations I have watched come to fruition in the years I have been posting articles at EzineArticles.com

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Brandi Cummings writes:

This is a great tool! I am wondering if it would be possible to add a function to allow you to choose more than one category. That way authors who write in multiple categories can choose to add more than one, but not necessarily all, categories to their widget.

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92260 writes:

Wow Brandi, you are indeed a very impressive person. This is a great article; “Are You Playing Hide And Seek With Your Customers?”

You know I could not agree more. I see you have many great articles here, I guess you have a new reader fan; namely ME! – Lance

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Christopher M. Knight writes:

Brandi,

We’ll consider that in a few months. Right now, we’re worried that we’re providing too many options. Too many options may lead to disengagement or the perception that it’s too complicated to install.

I’m glad you get the brilliance of the fact that this Widget is Javascript based and because of that, it doesn’t get indexed by the search engines and therefore creates no harm and provides value to your web visitors without costing you any link love.

David Westbrook doesn’t agree with you or I on this issue and he said so on his site a few weeks ago:
http://www.dewpointproductions.com/seo_blog/article-marketing/ezinearticles-widget-a-case-of-how-not-to-promote-yourself/

However, his recommendation isn’t “wrong”… just a little more difficult for some people who are not intimate with their CMS (Content Management System).

—
Majelis,

I can’t take the credit for the development of this widget as our development team lead the creation, bug fixing and management of the resources to support this new feature. :)

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Kathy Ostman-Magnusen writes:

I added one for my poetry on one of my blogs. Quite nifty!

Also, THANK YOU! for the very useful mouse pad and specs on my article views. I cannot help but feel prompted to write, write, write now for sure!

Kathy

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Lisa Smith writes:

This is awesome! I had the ezine banner on my website to encourage them to click to read my articles, but this is much better because they can see all the titles listed and the summaries, then click directly on any they are interested in.

Kudos!!!!!!

This inspires me to post some more articles.

Thanks for continuing to add value for your authors.

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Brandi Cummings writes:

@Lance – Thanks Lance! I’m glad you enjoyed the article.

@Chris – I read David Westbrook’s post and do disagree with him as you said I would.

Like you said not everybody has ‘an intimate relationship with their CMS’. I would bet that there are a lot of authors out there that have never even heard of a widget until this post and many more that have a good old fashioned website that they would like to promote their articles on and not a blog. This will give them an equal opportunity to promote their articles.

The other important thing that you said was that it ‘provides value to your web visitors’. You can never have too many tools that accomplish that. I think it is great. Well done.

** To avoid confusion, the first post by “Brandi” that referred to the duplicate content issue was by Brandi Reilly. I would agree with her statement, but cannot take credit for it. ;-)

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Christopher M. Knight writes:

Kathy,

I don’t know what you’re talking about… ;-)

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Kathy Ostman-Magnusen writes:

You don’t know what I am talking about? Humm.

Well, I got the mouse-pad in your pic here above in the mail the other day. Also enclosed was a letter commenting on one of my my poems that has had over 12K reads now.

I was just taking this opportunity to ‘thank you’.

It you are referring to my other comment, I made a ‘widget’ of my poems posted on EzineArticles and posted it on one of my blogs.

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Judy Rodman writes:

Chris, you and your company so ROCK! I just forwarded your email notification about your new widget to my webdesigner Jeff Jennette and he got it on my site in no time. It works great… he put it on an inner page ( http://www.judyrodman.com/vocal-training.htm ) because that page gets a more views than other pages except for my home page and my blog page, both full enough.

Thank you for your benefits-oriented approach to taking care of business!

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Kelly Swanson writes:

This is so super cool. Not that I had any idea how to do it. But my husband does. He is at this moment redesigning my new website and this is PERFECT timing because we were discussing how to put all my articles and stories on the new website in an organized manner. Love it, love it, love it. My husband says this is what Web2.0 is all about. Thank you for adding another feature to an already invaluable service.

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Kathy Ostman-Magnusen writes:

The only thing I am wondering about this darling little widget?

Cutie as is can be!

Is why would I use this instead of RSS feed?

Because I would not do both of course.

So which is better or am I not getting something?

Signed, Dumb Blond (?)

~~*~~

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Michael Searles writes:

The Widget is fantastic Chris.
It took me no more than 5 minutes to instal to my WordPress Blog at http://www.newendbeginning.com/blog
Many thanks.
Michael

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Christopher M. Knight writes:

Kathy,

Use either the EzineArticles Widget or inject your EzineArticles RSS Feed into your website CMS… your choice.

The EzineArticles Widget is based on AJAX technology. AJAX stands for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML. RSS feeds are XML… so essentially, the widget is based on the RSS feed…however, to insert an RSS feed into your website is a little more complicated than just copying/pasting the short Widget code.

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Robb Auspitz writes:

I like the fact that it’s easy to work with, looks good and helps add some usefule and valuable content to my business/shopping Blog, http://ra-stores.blogspot.com. Excellent job! I like that EzineArticles is pro-actively reaching out to its subscribers and giving us some value-added tools that actually help us. Keep up the great work!

Sincerely,

Robb Auspitz

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simonmaya writes:

I found this wigit really good, it was just what I was looking for. Previously I had to update my web page with my new articles (which I never got round to.

Now when I write a new article it will automatically be available on my web site.

Well done.

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Francois du Toit writes:

Hi Christopher,

Just installed the widget on my blog. It didn’t even take me 5 minutes and I think it looks great!

The url is http://online-marketing-from-home.com

Thanks again!
Francois

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Christopher M. Knight writes:

All,

Thanks to a member suggestion:

We’ve just added a new size to the widget: 160 pixels.

Previously, the shortest width was 180 pixels; but now you can select 160 pixels wide if you so desire.

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Christopher M. Knight writes:

Denise Pederson,

Nice implementation:
http://blog.coach-companion.com/ezinearticles/

One recommendation for Denise and everyone who implements this Widget:

It’s better to put it in your left or right navigation or in your footer include (as a last resort if left or right nav isn’t going to work); than to only do a blog entry with the widget included in it.

Reason: You and we both want to help your website readers to read your freshest EzineArticles content.

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Aila Accad writes:

Tried to get my widget, only to find that my name is not listed on the author list. I have one article published and one in the queue.

Aila

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Alyice writes:

Where have I been? Just found about this today. Added it to my blog, http://thedabblingmum.blogspot.com

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Brandi Cummings writes:

I know this is reaching way back to Jan but… I was wondering if you guys were still considering adding the ability to add more than one category to the Article Widget?

Thanks,
Brandi

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Christopher M. Knight writes:

Brandi,

Instead of using the public widget creation tool, log in to the EzineArticles membership interface, click on AUTHOR TOOLS, click on CREATE A WIDGET.

Select RECENTLY PUBLISHED ARTICLES and that will include all articles in all categories you have articles in.

Were you trying to include only one or two categories for your widget?

Can you give me very specifically what you want to see in your specific author widget?

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Brandi Cummings writes:

Correct. I would like to be able to include multiple categories in my widget but not necessarily all and here is why…

One of my target audiences is small business. However, some of the topics that I write about may get as specific as PPC click advertising, Internet marketing or topics that are more geared towards home based businesses and therefore get placed in those categories. So if I choose “small business” as the category when creating my widget, I am leaving out a lot of articles that would still be relevant to my audience. If I could select Small Business, Internet Marketing, Home Based Business, PPC (as an example) as the categories to include in my widget than I could make sure that all relevant articles would be displayed.

So why not just include all RECENTLY PUBLISHED in my widget? Because I also write articles in the real estate category and those are not necessarily relevant to my small business audience.

I want to keep my marketing as targeted and relevant as possible to my audience. Having real estate articles mixed in with my small business articles will detract from my message. (And vice versa.) I would think other authors had run into this as well… But, it sounds as if you are not having other requests for the option so I might be alone on this. :-)

What do you think?

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Christopher M. Knight writes:

Brandi,

I think your challenge is not unique.

For many years, I’ve been advising authors to isolate their expertise based on variations of their name (Authors With Multiple Brands – Secrets to Managing Multiple Topics When Writing Articles) as this solves the problem perfectly.

For now, we’ll take your suggestion and consider it for the next release of our widget when we get around to updating it.

We’re currently designing widgets for Yahoo Widgets and Google Gadgets next.

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Pat & Lorna Shanks writes:

Hello Chris,

We have added the ezine widget to our blog over at: http://www.PatAndLorna.com far right column, about third of the way down.

Because we are a husband and wife team and the way
EzineArticles works we are required to submit separate articles. So we require 2 widgets to be displayed on our blog.

We are currently having a little challenge that seem to only happen with IE (firefox is ok).

I’ve attached a screen shot so that you can see
the problem.
http://screencast.com/t/YN2KFBc8Jf4

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks,
— Pat & Lorna

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Christopher M. Knight writes:

Pat & Lorna,

The problem was caused by Internet Explorer failing to properly count the number of widgets on the page and increment the element IDs appropriately. This was causing the content of the second widget to be placed inside the first.

This is now fixed.

:)
-Chris

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Pat & Lorna Shanks writes:

Hey Chris,

Thanks for the quick response and fix. We tired everything we could think of on our blog. So glad that it’s working now.

So I guess that asks one question that we would be interested in knowing, how many co-author or teams are there at EzineArticles? Not any easy thing to find out.

We also enjoyed your call a couple of week with Jeff Herring at the http://www.ArticleMarketingCafe.com

Thanks so much,
— Pat & Lorna

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Christopher M. Knight writes:

Answer = Not many… as in, handfuls at most.

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Shain Thomas writes:

Chris,

Whilst other people found this page useful, I am afraid I cannot say the same. The instructions end at “Now you can simply Copy/Paste your widget code into your website or blog!” I wish I could but I do not know where to add the code. I thought I did. When I tried adding the code, all I saw on my page was the actual code.

Shain

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