Look, I’ve been there before myself.  It happens with blogs, it happens with computers, it happens with cars and pizzas and pretty much anything that allows you a whole laundry list of options.  Our first compulsion, as the technologically-savvy, is to load our pizzas and computers–and yes, our blogs–with all the bells and whistles and widgets and everything else we could ever possibly want.

The big question here is: how many do we NEED?

A good way to see if you’ve got unnecessary widgets is to check how fast your blog loads.  If it’s taking a while because your time-and-temperature widget is conflicting with your stock ticker and news scrolls, maybe it’s time to dump one or the other.  It’s always best to have just the widgets you need, and maybe just a couple you want.

Think of your blog like a pizza.  Yes, you can get anchovies and pineapple added to your super supreme (a common name for this is a “garbage pizza” or a “kitchen sink pizza” because it contains just about everything on the menu whether it should be there or not), but SHOULD you?  Aren’t there much more pleasant possibilities in a plain pepperoni pizza?  Or a pepperoni and mushroom?  A couple of flavors will go a long way, instead of trying to bite through an inch-thick layer of EVERYTHING just to get to the cheese and sauce of your blog.

So be careful how many widgets you go installing, because too many won’t give information, but rather make it harder to get.

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