SpotBack - Rating Widget for Blogger

Blogger Style:

New Layouts

Classic Templates

Working with:

Edit Html

Widgets

UPDATE: This service is no longer active. Too bad, it would have been invaluable for structured ratings data.

Rating widgets allow your readers to interact with your blog and provide you, the writer, with feedback on what they deem your articles to be worth. There are an abundancy of rating widget services on the Internet and typically are of the vanilla "five star" variety.


Enter Spotback's Rate Everything widget which brings not only the ability for your readers to rate your posts, but other features with the purpose of generating more user interaction with your blog. The widget enables your readers to tag your posts, find personalized recommendations and referrals to other destinations on your site. The service is free and childsplay to install.

Your rating and tagging history will be saved to your personal profile and provide you with statistics on what your readers really do think. Tagging history could possibly be used to develop keyword search term lists. If you know how they are tagging your posts, then it is not difficult to imagine how they would be searching for that information.

All of this is packaged into a completely customizable widget of your choosing. Either select a ready-made design from the SpotBack gallery or use the online editor to roll-your-own. The editor allows you to add any element you want into it (rate-this, tags, etc.) and define CSS properties for background images, font size and color, borders, labels, etc.

How to get your Spotback Rate Everything widget

Go to the Spotback Get a Widget page. You will be presented with a choice of widget styles. Just pick one that you feel comfortable with, you can always modify your choice later.

The next screen will enable you to register an account with Spotback. Creating an account allows you to access and manage your rated posts. After you complete the registration process, you will be able to create your personal rating and recommended content widgets.

Once your widget is selected (or built from scratch) grab the code for your style of blog (Classic/New) and paste it into your template. Since everyone's templates are different, you will have to feel your way around. But Spotback has some guidlines for both Classic and New Layouts.

If you like, I have designed a rater widget for Blogger. Instead of stars, it uses the orange B's -- you can see it just below this post.