Website Gadgets

Free Gadgets For Your Site

How about a counter to help track how many visitors come to your website? What about a search box that will help visitors find stuff on your pages? How about a game? Most website gadgets are scripts, pieces of code that you can copy and paste right into your web pages. The scripts will add special features to your website, without having to learn any code at all. If you can copy and paste, there are plenty of cool things you can do to spiff up your website, blog or online store, without knowing a thing about programming or script writing.

Even better, most of the gizmos and gadgets are free. Fortunately, there are many web programmers that are happy to let you download a free script. That's great, because you can try a number of things out, without having to pay anything. Although you don't have to crack open your wallet, the scriptwriters usually do ask for something in return, such as a link on your website pointing to their website, or a small banner on your site for them. In exchange for free website gizmos, it could be well worth it for your site.

Where to Find Gadgets

You can use a search engine to find free website add-ons. Just search for terms like free scripts, or website gadgets. But why bother? Here's a list of some of the best sites for finding gadgets:

• Bravenet hosts a number of free scripts on their website. They have a guestbook, message forum, counters, chat rooms and much more. You can sign up for free, and select the scripts you want. When you are ready to install, just follow the directions. In most cases, you copy and paste the script into your web pages. The rest is done through special coding and using the Bravenet resources.
• Geocities has free hosting for your website, but they also feature a lot of cool gadgets as well. If you host your website with them, they have scripts for counters, clocks, maps and more. You can even add a search box to your web page, that will allow visitors to search your website or the World Wide Web.
• Matt's Scripts has a ton of already created scripts prepared for you. The scripts can create form mail, message boards and link directories for your website. Again, you just follow the directions and you can have all these cool gizmos on your website.
• Other gadget directories include HotScripts, Scripts.com and Script Search.

What Kind of Free Scripts?

What sort of scripts can you find for your website? Message boards and guestbooks are probably the most popular, followed closely by feedback forms and counters. There are also search engines, post cards, web rings, quizzes, clocks, banner exchanges, link directories and even games. If you want to increase traffic, use these tools to turn your website into a community. Here are some examples that I've pasted into this page:

Visits to this page. Get your own free hit counter.

In some cases, installation is more complicated that just pasting a snippet of HTML or code into your pages. For those scripts that must be uploaded and installed on your web hosting account, some script writers will help you install the software to your website for you, for a small fee. This is great if you really want a particular script but don't have the skills to plug it into your site.