A web widget is a piece of code you can add to your website. The code can grab content from another website and insert it into a page on your site. Web widgets go by different names: HTML embeds, embed code, plug-ins, and gadgets. Since web widgets are embedded, visitors to your site do not have to leave the page or open a new tab to see the content.
I’ve embedded a weather widget below that I copied from Accuweather.com and pasted it into my website’s editor.
Places like Accurweather.com that offer embed codes usually make it easy to copy the code.
Here are instructions for Google Sites. One thing to keep in mind is that the web widget may not display properly (or at all) until you save or publish the webpage. Even after publishing or saving, you may need to visit your published page’s URL in order to see the widget, as they often do not appear when previewing a page.
You can embed weather reports, jokes, YouTube videos, audio recording, visitor maps, Twitter streams, documents, etc.
Some web widgets rely on the Flash plug in to function. Try to avoid these widgets because Flash can be blocked on computers and it does not work on mobile devices.
Embed codes pull content from another website and places it on your site. That means you are not completely in control of that content. One day the widget may change or stop working.
Your school’s web filter may block the site that is hosting the embedded content. If that’s the case, then the widget will not be displayed when your site is accessed at school.
Not only can having too many web widgets make a page look cluttered, but web widgets can make your page take longer to load.
If a web widget is not centered on your page and you’d like it to be, try typing <center> before and </center> after the embed code. This doesn’t always work, but it’s worth a try.