Blog widget?

I'm looking for a "widget" so that my blog posts show up on the home page of my website. I don't want to go with a purely blog based website though. On the front page I don't want the blog header, I don't want the archive on the side, just the posts, in about a 400x400 px box. I could do an iframe, but I think I'd still run into the problem of the blog header/archive sections. Anyone know if wordpress or blogger have some kind of widget that would let me do this? Every time I look for "blog widget" or any other related phrase I only find widgets -for- blogs, no widgets which -contain- the blogs, if that makes any sense. Any help would be appreciated, thanks.

I don't think your looking for a widget, I think your looking for a theme that you can alter so it looks like only one post full width page. If you looking for that then I would suggest the Thesis theme or the Swift theme. Both allow you to post one blog entry on a full width page.

Another way to create a static front page is to follow the directions here WordPress Codex.

Most themes when you do that show two posts at the bottom, while the top part is a static page. You can also do a search for static WordPress themes, or have a one page WordPress theme.

Hope that helped, If not I'll do some more research for you.

Hmm, well, that's all Greek to me, lol.

I guess the way I'm envisioning it the theme wouldn't even be visible, really. I saw the full width template when I was messing around with WP. I'd kind of like to be able to have a separate page for the blog, in which the regular format -is- available, with the archive column and whatnot, but I would like to have just a chunk of code that I could copy and paste into my HTML file to go with my existing website that has just the posts.

If that is the case what you may want is to remove some of the WP code that includes the header and sidebar. Everything you say can be done in WP. However, it means getting into the PHP code.

For example you would take out the

get_header();

out of the index.php file to remove the header. You can then set up a static page WP to show the minimalist look you want. The same thing could be done with the sidebar and post title's.

There is no widget or plugin that will do that for you. Only by hard coding WP can you do something like that. If you have a separate HTML only webpage, and a separate WP blog the only thing you can do in that case is to copy and paste. Since a HTML only webpage doesn't have any bells and whistles like a WP blog does they cannot communicate with each other. Even if the blog tried to notify the website of a new post the website wouldn't know what to do with it.

If you have two separate sites, why not write your blog posts in Windows Live Writer? That way you could post to your blog, and copy and paste the formatted HTML into website directly from Live Writer. I do something like that for a foreign country blog I sometimes write for. I post the original article in my blog, copy the source, and paste it in this pain in the neck website blog. Adds two minutes tops to the entire endeavor.

Hope this helps you out.

Hmm, thanks for the info, I really appreciate it.

It seems odd that such popular platforms like WP and Blogger wouldn't have anything like that. After all, facebook has a live feed widget you can stick on your site that shows all the posts on your FB page, eBay has one that shows all the items you have for sale, and so on. It seems pretty common to have something like that. Know of any decent alternatives that may have something like that?

What your talking about is RSS feeds. I get RSS feeds from popular websites, make them unique, and re-post them onto a blog I have. However, this is not the right forum to talk about this in.

You may want to look into auto-content plugins and stand alone programs that grab RSS feeds. I am stepping away from this, because I don't want to lead you down a road you should not go down. Just look up "auto content plugin" and you should find something that would work for you. Since your not doing anything bad I would go for a free one that automates everything. Anything you have to pay for is overkill for what you want.

I hope this helps, but don't get any ideas about taking this to the next level. Stick to RSS feeds you own and there will be no problems for you. Copywrite is expensive when your caught in the proverbial cookie jar.

Yeah, I'm not exactly doing anything risky here, it's just my own blog which I want displayed in a small space on my main site. I hadn't thought of an RSS feed until you mentioned it, but aren't those pretty basic? I'd like people to at least be able to see the thumbnails of the images I post, as well as the stuff that I link to.