blogintroduction
Shows a thumbnail of a blogroll/linkroll-entry by random
By Consider an alternative
blogintroduction shows warning signs in 2026 — compare the alternatives below before installing. It runs on 10+ sites and was last updated 17 years ago, and scores 23/100 on our health check.
- Small user base (10+ active installs)
- Very few reviews so far
- No update in 17 years
- Only tested up to WordPress 2.8 (latest is 7.1)
How does it stack up?
Side-by-side on installs, updates, ratings & support
Daily downloads
Download spikes usually follow a new release — each site that auto-updates counts as a download.
Rankings
Where blogintroduction stands todayWordPress.org search rankings
Live position in the plugin search, top 100| Keyword | Position |
|---|---|
| blog | >100 |
| introduction | >100 |
| sidebar | >100 |
| thumbnail | >100 |
| widget | >100 |
Version adoption
Share of active sites per release.
About blogintroduction
From the official readme · v0.3.0Description
This is a widget that brings up a little preview of a site into the sidebar. If you want to use this in a widget-less / static sidebar, give blogintroduction-wordpress-plugin a chance. The link is chosen by random out of the links in the WordPress link-manager. You can specify a single link-category or use all categories for the random-link-base.
You can also decide to show invisible/private links. This is for the case you want to show links as a preview you don’t want to show in the linkroll.
If you want and if there is a description for the link done in the link-description-field it would be shown.
A refreshing via AJAX could be enabled with a specific time (in seconds) when the next thumbnail would be loaded.
This widget uses the websnapr-Service for generating the thumbnail-images. Keep their term of use in mind. You should get an API-Key for free from there to use this widget and get more then 80 snapshots per hour, with key it would be about 340 per hour (250.000 a month).
Since Version 0.3.0 you could also use the image-link stored in the link-manager for containing the link to the preview-image. If no link is given the widget would use websnapr as fall back.
If you want to translate the plugin, feel free to do it! Since Version 0.2.0 the Output is fully internationalized.
To see the widget working in a production-environment, visit the author’s blog.
If you want to leave a feedback, feel free to do this on the plugin’s homepage of the author’s blog. Though the pages are in german, comments in english are wellcome, too.
Installation
- Upload
blogintroduction.phpandblogintroduction_ajax.phpto the/wp-content/plugins/blogintroduction-wordpress-widgetdirectory - Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress
- Go to Presentation -> Widgets and add the Blogintroduction widget
- Configure your widget
The configuration is a simple thing:
- Title: This is simple the title of the sidebar-box shown in the box-header.
- Websnapr-API-Key: Here you could put in your API-Key. It’s not necessary to fill this field for running the widget but its better to keep in mind with the term of use I think.
- Image-width: The value is a the number of pixels of the image-width in the sidebar. This parameter correspondents to the width-value in the html-img-tag.
- Image-height: The value is a the number of pixels of the image-height in the sidebar. This parameter correspondents to the height-value in the html-img-tag.
- use4:1-ratio: If checked, height would be well-sized to a 4:3-ratio corresponding to the width-value. Given height above would be ignored then.
- Image-source: Here you could chose from where the preview-image would be loaded: From websnapr or from a location given by the Image-URL in the link-manager.
- Link-category: Here you could chose the category of the links that would be the source for the random-links.
- Link-target: Simply means link-target. So where the link should be opened. “Im neuen Fenster” means in a new window, “Im aktuellen Fenster” means in the actual window of the browser.
- Show description: If the checkbox is checked, the link-description in the link-manager would be shown with a Label “Description” (depending on the translation).
- Show private links: Check this box to show private-links.
- Show new thumbnail in … seconds: Here you enable the auto-renew-function, that means, every x seconds depending on the value you enter in the box on the right side, a new thumbnail would be shown. The minimum time is 10 seconds to avoid heavy traffic and other problems.
Changelog
Version 0.3.0:
* Image-Source chooseable
* Fixed issue with image-height
Version 0.2.3:
- Fixed issue with malfunctional refresh
Version 0.2.2:
- Fixed html-output for IE (description-part)
Version 0.2.1:
- Referer-check in AJAX-part implemented
- Output now validates against W3C
Version 0.2.0:
- plugin-internationalization included
Version 0.1.2:
- minimum refresh time set to 10 seconds
Version 0.1.1:
- plugin activation fixed
Version 0.1.0:
- adding AJAX for refreshing thumbsnails
Version 0.0.2:
- API-Key added
- show private/invisible links added
- CSS-Style-Classes added
- urlencoding fixed
Version 0.0.1:
- Initial shot.
Screenshots
For developers
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Best blogintroduction alternatives
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FAQ
blogintroduction: quick answers
Straight answers, pulled from live WordPress.org data.
Live data from WordPress.org · checked Sep 30, 2026
Is blogintroduction free?
Yes. blogintroduction is free to download and use from the official WordPress.org plugin directory.
Is blogintroduction safe to use in 2026?
blogintroduction shows warning signs in 2026 — compare the alternatives below before installing. It runs on 10+ sites and was last updated 17 years ago, and scores 23/100 on our health check.
How many websites use blogintroduction?
blogintroduction is active on 10+ WordPress websites and has been downloaded 4,079 times since it launched in January 2009. It was downloaded 40 times in the last 30 days.
Does blogintroduction work with WordPress 7.1?
blogintroduction is officially tested up to WordPress 2.8, while the latest release is 7.1.2. It may still work, but try it on a staging site first.
When was blogintroduction last updated?
The latest version, 0.3.0, was released on May 23, 2009 (17 years ago).
What are the best alternatives to blogintroduction?
The most popular alternatives to blogintroduction are SiteOrigin Widgets Bundle (400K+ installs), All In One Favicon (60K+ installs) and Gum Addon for Elementor (50K+ installs).
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