3 Free chat widgets for Blogger Blog

If you are interesting in adding high level of interactivityto your Blogger Blog, you may consider embedding one of the free chat widgetsto your web pages. That will give your visitors an opportunity to discuss inreal time the blog content, share ideas, and provide instant comments.

While there are multiple services offering their products tothe blog publishers, we will review just few selected.

1. Chatroll (http://chatroll.com/)

Chatroll allows addingchat room to your blogger blog with great ease, in matter of minutes. First, goto Chatroll, enter your community’s name in the “Name Your Live Community…” boxand click “Create”. Choose a name that fits your blog, and this name will serveas a title for your chat box. It is recommended to invest some time in writing anattractive and detailed description for your chat room purposes, so that peoplecan easily find your new Chatroll community. Detailed instructions on how toembed your new chat room into your Blogger blog are provided here.

Free plan allows chatting in your chat room for up to 10users simultaneously. Any time, you can upgrade your plan to the payable morefeatures-rich plans, and even utilize the income sharing moneymaking opportunities,offered by the service developers.

2. Shoutmix (http://www.shoutmix.com/main/index.php)

Shoutmix is oneof the most popular on the market services, adding live chat capabilities toyour blog. You will be able to get instant feedback and great user interactionwith this shoutbox chat widget. As with most of the chat room widgets, you willhave to register your shoutbox widget first. Detailed instructions on how toembed your new chat room into your Blogger blog are provided here.

Basic free account gives you comprehensive set of featuresand capabilities to start with, like supporting up to 100 users and storing 150posts in your shoutbox. You can always upgrade to the Premium account, whichwill cost you $2/month for more capabilities.

3. Freeshoutbox (http://www.freeshoutbox.net/)

If you prefer service which is totally free with no free andpaid plans, as in most other offerings, you may take a look at Freeshoutbox.net. Integration is fastand simple, and you have multiple (more than 200) templates to choose from inorder to match the shoutbox design to your blog structure. Detailedinstructions on how to embed your new chat room into your Blogger blog areprovided here.

Service is free, with unlimited bandwidth and auto-refreshrate 6/minute, but you will get unobtrusive advertising at the bottom of thewidget.

Adding music to Blogger – an easy way!

There are multiple solutions for those, who would like to add musiccollection to the Blogger blog. If you have the music and entertainment relatedresources, most likely, you already have the more or less professionalsolution, while you keep the audio files on your own or web based server, andyou broadcast them through the embedded audio player. However, for those whoneed to illustrate the post with the music collection occasionally, thepresented solution might be quite handy.

iLike is a socialmusic discovery service and the dominant music application on the Facebook andGoogle platforms, which is now a subsidiary of MySpace since 2009. For ourpurposes, iLike.com allows creating a playlist of chosen songs and adding music toBlogger, Typepad, or, in fact, any web site, for free. For Blogger, you don'teven need to mess with the HTML code - you create a playlist and then hit the Addto Blogger button.

What isiLike.com?

iLike.com is a free service that lets you create playlists of songs youwant and share them with friends. Additionally, you can download free MP3 songfiles from new artists, learn about concerts, watch videos uploaded by artistsand much more. The community run web site lets you follow changing music tastesand access popular songs.

How to createa playlist of songs and add it to your blog?

Though there is a glaring orange signup button when you go to iLikehomepage, you actually don't need to register for an account just to create aplaylist of songs. Point your browser to embeddable playlist page (http://www.ilike.com/playlist/create_embedded).

You can now start creating the playlist - follow the five steps outlinedin the image below.

• Step 1: Enter a name for the playlist - this can be anything you want. A descriptive name is recommended.
• Step 2: Search for a song by either entering an artist or the song name in the search field.
• Step 3: Search results will be listed. I recommend trying to locate a song by its name because if the search is performed on the artist's name, only 10 results will be displayed and the song you are looking for might not be shown. Click on the "Add" button to include the song in the playlist.
• Step 4: Organize your playlist. You can also reorder the song listing by either entering a new order number or using the conveniently provided arrow buttons. To delete a song from the list simply hit the "Delete" (the one with the cross) button.
• Step 5: Click on the large "Done" button when you are satisfied with the playlist and are ready to add it to blogger.

The next page shows you how the playlist is going to look on a web page -on Blogger, as we shall see, the playlist is added as a widget which you canplace at different positions on the web page. You also get the direct link (theURL) of you playlist on iLike.com website. With a single click you can also putthe list on your Facebook profile page or tweet it on Twitter (where else?).You don't need to fiddle around with the HTML code if you just want to includethe playlist on Blogger.

Add the musicplaylist to Blogger

Click on the large "Add to Blogger" button in the middle of thepage. A new browser window shall open in which you need to enter your bloggerusername and password. You will now find yourself in the Layout -> Pageelements page. Place the playlist in the blog as you want and save thechanges. Note: it's added as a widget. Review your blog and tell everyone aboutit.

If you need to add this playlist to any other web site, you can get therelated code you can embed it anywhere with ease.

This review is performed by WebDevelopers Notes Blog.


The service drawback is that you cannot upload your own files to the playlist, and the fact that not all the tracks you may find through the search are in fact playable.