Widgets are a great way to share content across your site for three reasons:

They automatically update as new content gets created.

EXAMPLE: The Latest Discussions widget displays the latest discussions posts and automatically shows new discussions as they're posted. The benefit is two-fold: Widgets ensure fresh content is always available for your members and they require minimal maintenance.

They respect security settings and user access on a per-user basis, dynamically showing only the content available to each user.

EXAMPLE: When Mary views the Latest Discussions widget, she only sees posts from communities she belongs to, while John only sees posts from communities he belongs to, and so on.

They have configurable parameters with which you can customize them.

You should take advantage of the benefits that are offered by these customizable widgets so that automated and dynamic updates keep your site content fresh and your community managers focused on user-engagement tasks and projects.

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Widget Categories

There are dozens of widgets available and they are grouped into categories based on their associated product area or function (e.g., blogs, discussions, communities, libraries).

When editing a page, click the Category menu on the Build tab to view the widget categories. After selecting a category, its widgets are displayed.

Add a Widget

To learn how to add widgets, refer to the Build Page Layout & Content article.

Widget Parameters

There are dozens of widgets, and each has several configuration parameters which enable you to customize the content, layout, and appearance of the widget. When editing a widget, the field names and descriptions make it easier to understand each parameter's purpose, as shown in the following example.

Popular Widgets

Although there are dozens of widgets available to you, those that you're most likely to use are in the Feeds category because these automatically display the latest content from Higher Logic's core products (announcements, discussions, blogs, etc.).

NOTE: These are the default widgets that typically get added to a community site's (and any microsite's) landing page and home pages.

Best-practice Feed Widgets

Like all widgets, each best-practice widget will display content based on its configured parameters. The best-practice widgets are described below.