a) Widgets: Recent Posts, Calendar, Google Search (Blog Searcher) Plugins: AddThis Social Share, Embed Any Document, Custom CSS

b) Recent posts provide a method of finding previous posts without having to navigate through the blog. Because my blog begins in the About Me page as opposed to the Recent Posts page, this is useful. The calendar will identify any dates in which a post was uploaded. Google Search provides a search engine when looking for other blogs. AddThis Social Share creates a window next to the blog that allows people to share my posts or its contents. Embed Any Document allows me to embed a document instead of making a link. Custom CSS provides a coding window where I can further personalize my blog.

c) Recent Posts has a limit of posts which will be shown. Any older posts won’t be shown on the window. The calendar can seem pretty useless as there are less uploads these days so no dates will be highlighted. Google Search will only help when searching for other people’s blogs. AddThis will rarely be used, but it offers almost all methods of social networking. Embed Any Document only offers online embedding by URL, Dropbox, Google Drive, and Box. Any other method will not work. Custom CSS is hard to use as it does not give a clear aid to the coding language. Basic knowledge of colour and format coding will be required.

d) Most of these programs can be used on a daily basis. They can definitely be useful for navigating a blog and simplifying the process of posting. I would recommend the Embed Any Document because it is very tedious to find a document, then upload it as a hyperlink that will just allow the person to download it. If the viewer was only hoping for a preview of the certain document, then it would take them much more time to download the document, then open it and look for the part they want. If the document is embedded, then they can simply look over the preview for the part they want. Any other plugin is rarely used for my needs at the moment.