A Nice Weather Gadget for your Web Page

One of my web sites is for gardeners so I added a local weather gadget. The gadget features current weather conditions, and a 3-day forecast. Gadgets are specialized bits of code and are fairly easy to add to a web page. 

To add the weather gadget:

1. Go to Accuweather.com net weather download site.GEM #3!!

2. Choose your language and type in zip code. Click next. Select your weather forecast size, category, and theme.

3. Preview the gadget and change the background, if desired. Click next.

4. Read terms. Click next. Highlight the code, and copy it on your clipboard.

5. Paste the gadget code where you want it in your webpage html. 

6. If you want to center or style the gadget, enclose it in a div, and add styling for that div.

7. Save and update your server.

What can go wrong (or I know this because it happened to me):

The first weather gadget I worked with on a school project was not visible until I put the site on the server. [A preview of the site revealed no weather gadget.]

In contrast, the Net weather gadget was visible before updating my server. The invisible gadget wasted time because I didn’t know it was working, and racked my brain trying to figure out the problem.

The aforementioned weather gadget was from Google gadgets, and, for the purpose of the school project, featured Tucson, Arizona. I needed to find the original Google gadget page to modify the code for my home town. The problem: I did not take good notes on where I found this gadget OR bookmark it where I could find it. There are thousands of Google gadgets in no particular order interspersed with scantily clad girl gadgets. It’s no picnic sorting through all that trying to find the gadget I used previously. I never did find it, and wasted a couple of days.

Lessons learned:

1. Don’t panic if your gadget isn’t visible on a preview.

2. Take good notes AND make good bookmarks.