I have been a big fan or Yet Another Related Posts Plugin (YARPP) which also can be used to display images in related posts and also has a in-built template to do it now. However, I had to drop YARPP from the site due to it being database intensive. After YARPP, I started using LinkWithin, which provided a good solution to integrate related posts through a third-party service.

After using LinkWithin for a while I wasn’t that happy with the performance and also got complaints from out team about it using advertising images as post images if none existed in the post itself. (Check screenshot above)

Now, I was trying to find a related posts plugin which did not use internal database resources and was really good. That was when I stumbled across Outbrain. Outbrain is an excellent third-party related posts widget, which works pretty well and also provides users with an option to view post click statistics and also make money by placing links to external sites in the related sites widget.

The click-through rate on Outbrain is pretty impressive too and users usually see a click through rate of anywhere between 3-12%. Another good thing about Outbrain widget is that it blends into your website without having to do any CSS manipulations.

Techie Buzz Verdict

Outbrain Related posts widget can be used on WordPress, Blogger, Drupal, TypePad and almost any type of website you have using a JavaScript code. The plus point of this widget is that it does not use your database and is perfect for a high traffic site and that is also provides you with easy stats. Oh and yes it also has a recommendation widget using which people can rate your post.

Twitter is buzzing and if your blog is based on WordPress, following is a collection of some of the best Twitter plugins which can be integrated in your WordPress blog.

Tweet This, a WordPress plugin for Twitter: Adds a Tweet This Postlink to every post and page on your blog. This plugin can automatically tweet new blog posts.

TweetSuite: Another useful plugin for WordPress that includes server-side tweetbacks, ReTweet-this buttons, a digg-like Tweet-This button, automatic tweeting of new posts and other useful widgets.

TweetMeme Button: This plugin allows your blog posts to be re-tweeted. The TweetMeme button provides a live count of how many times your post/page has been re-tweeted. It gives you the ability to control the length of the tweets and, supports hashtags.

Twitter Tools: This WordPress plugin integrates your WordPress blog with your Twitter account. It enables you to pull your tweets into your blog and create new tweets on blog posts and from within WordPress.

WP to Twitter: This plugin posts a Twitter status update from your WordPress based blog using a couple of URL shortening services to provide a backlink to your post from Twitter.

Twitter for WordPress: Displays yours latest tweets in your WordPress blog. This plugin detects URLs, e-mail address and @username replies. It’s simple for use and is customizable.

WP FollowMe: Enables you to add a twitter “Follow me” badge on your WordPress based blog.

Tweetbox: The tweetbox plugin allows you to display your latest tweets in the sidebar of your WordPress based blog.

WordTwit:   When you publish a new post on your blog, WordTwit will automatically tweet your post and converts any links to tiny URLs.

Do tell us about your favorite Twitter plugins for WordPress in comments.

Digg is already planning a design makeover, but now they have rolled out major changes in their widgets and official buttons for blogs and websites.

The newer Digg buttons work the same way as the older ones. A reader can click the button to submit a blog post to the Digg site, where other users can vote on the story and spread the word about it. However, the newer buttons comes in different sizes and formats, so bloggers have more choice now.

Implementing the New Digg Buttons in Your Blog

The new Digg buttons requires that you place a single <script> tag before </head> tag of your blog template or theme. Then you can use <a> tags to call the script used in the header. If you want to implement multiple Digg buttons on your website, simply add an additional <a> tag. Do not use multiple <script> tags in your theme.

<script src="http://widgets.digg.com/buttons.js"

type="text/javascript"></script>

The Medium Digg button : Simply copy and paste the following code in your website’s source to integrate a medium sized Digg button.

<a class="DiggThisButton DiggMedium"></a>

The Large Digg Button: The large button looks good and if you get a lot of Diggs, use the following code to add a large Digg button in your blog or website.

<a class="DiggThisButton DiggLarge"></a>

The Compact Digg Button: The following code will show a compact “Digg this” button in your website. This button would suit good if you use a lot of other buttons and have really less place in the blog template for social media promotion.

<a class="DiggThisButton DiggCompact"></a>

The Digg Icon: Didn’t liked this one, however some of you may want to use it. You can show a tiny “Digg” icon using the following code:

<a class="DiggThisButton DiggIcon"></a>

Features of the New Digg Buttons

The new Digg buttons have some features worth pointing out:

1. Faster load time: Digg is chasing speed and that reflects in their recent developments. The new buttons load faster which is one of the major reason why you should consider a switch.

2. More Button Sizes: No longer you have to embed a large Digg button if your site do not have that extra space. With the availability of 3 new formats, customizing the “Digg” button is child’s play.

3. Auto Upgrades: The newer buttons will automatically upgrade when there is a new release, so there is no dirty hand coding, deleting old stuff and adding new codes. One code does it all.

4. The User Stays on your site after Digging: This is the much desired feature. After Digging a post, the user will remain in your site. From now on, you can expect a better bounce rate from Digg traffic.

The Digg Widget Generator

The Digg widget generator displays the latest Dugged posts of your site like a widget, which can be embedded anywhere in your site. You can completely customize the look and feel of the widget, adjust colors, width and other parameters.

If your blog receives a lot of Diggs, using this widget is a must because it will encourage your readers to vote the stories that are already popular and may be you can make it to the first page of Digg. More information can be found on the Digg blog.

Many blogs and websites sport Facebook fan widgets, which is officially available for fan pages on Facebook. However, if you also have a Twitter account for your blog, you can only display a twittercounter widget or a custom icon which leads to your twitter account.

Twitter Fans Widget is a new and interesting WordPress plugin, which will allow you to display a Twitter Fans Widget similar to Facebook widget for your site. Once you have installed the plugin on your blog, go to Appearance > Widgetsand drag the Twitter Fans widget to wherever you want to display it.

Add the twitter username and the number of fans you want to display on the widget, and customize the colors for the widget. Once you are done, save the widget and reload the site to view the Twitter Fans widget in action. By the way, you can follow us @techiebuzzer to get the latest updates delivered directly to your Twitter timeline.

Thanks @loyals

Download Twitter Fans WordPress Plugin

Twitter introduced the lists feature some days back. We have seen how to create Twitter lists and how to create an Rss feed from your Twitter list pages. But if you want to show tweets from a public Twitter list in your Blog, this widget will come in handy.

How to create the widget for any public Twitter list

1. Go to Twitter Widgets list and start customizing your list. Give your widget a title and a caption.

2. To search for a public Twitter list, just enter the username of the person who created the list. For example, if you are interested in the Techie-Buzz author list, type keithdsouza(without quotes) in the username field. After that click the button that says Find lists.

3. Go to the preferences tab to customize the widget settings. You can choose to load all tweets as they come or you can, specify a timed interval. Other settings include adding avatars, timestamps and hashtags in the widget.

4. Next, you would want to customize the widget according to the look and feel of your blog. Switch to the appearance tab, and you can start customizing the widget. You can choose the color of the widget, tweets and links according to your style.

The dimensions tab lets you choose a custom size of the widget, and the widget can be completely customized in appearance. After that hit the Grab codebutton and you can integrate the widget in your blog, website or social networking profiles.

This is how the Techie-Buzz Twitter author list looks:

You can follow the techie-buzz author list here. Don’t forget to check out the ultimate collection of twitter websites and applications.

When I redesigned the theme, I added a few magazine style widgets to the blog. Many of you emailed me to ask, how you can add a similar magazine style to your blog. In this post, we will look at how you can create your own magazine style widget using Netvibes.

The entire tutorial consists of two processes. The first process involves creating your custom Netvibes widget. The second process involves customizing and adding the widget to your blog.

Creating a Netvibes Widget

Step 1: Sign in to your Netvibes account. You will need to create one if you don’t have an account.

Step 2: Once you have signed in to your account, click on the Create or submit buttonin the navigation bar.

Step 3: Click on the Create widgetbutton in the overlay that pops up.

Step 4: Choose whether you want to create a Blog/News widget or a Multifeed widget. In this tutorial, we will deal with single blog/news feed widget.

Step 5: Enter the feed URL into the text box and click on the Next step button.

Step 6: On the next page, enter all the details about the feed and choose whether or not you want to publish the widget to the ecosystem, and click on the next step button.

Step 7: If everything goes fine, a link to your new custom widget will be displayed to you. Please make not of the link as we will be using the link in the future.

Adding a Netvibes Widget to Your Blog

Once you have created the widget, you can now add it to your blog. Follow the steps given below to customize and add the widget to your blog. For this example, we will make use of the Techie Buzz Netvibes widget.

Step 1: Copy and paste the link you got from Step 7 in a new browser tab or window.

Step 2: Click on the Share link in the widget sidebar, this will take you to a new page where you can customize the widget.

Step 3: You can customize the widget by adding a title to it, changing the height and modifying its color.

Step 4: Under Widget preferencesselect Magazine from the view dropdown to create a magazine style widget. You can also configure other things such as, number of items to display, whether links should open in new windows.You can also choose to display the post data and excerpt.

Step 4: Once you have configured the widget, go to the bottom of the page to get the widget code. You will need to paste the code into your website for the widget to be displayed.

Using the above steps you can build as many magazine style widgets you want and customize them using several options. Of course, Netvibes also providers users with many different styles to choose from.

Looking for more tips and tricks for your website? Don’t forget to visit the Webmaster tips section to learn more.

Here is something Opera and Twitter fans will definitely love, a nice and cool widget for Opera that is simple lightweight and can be used to tweet away when you are browsing or surfing in Opera.

The widget allows you to perform operations like view recent messages, view replies, view direct messages, browse archives, search, find people near you and so on, in addition to that it also has a inbuilt mechanism to shorten URLs you want to share.

In addition to that you can also reply to message, send a DM message to someone and retweet (RT) your friends tweets. Definitely worth using if you are a Opera user.

Download Twitter Widget for Opera