Writers' News widget for websites launched

firstwriter.com has just released a new widget for website owners, which allows them to display the latest headlines related to writing and publishing for free on their websites.

firstwriter.com gathers together stories from all over the internet, including renowned sources like The Washington Post, The Guardian, The Huffington Post, the BBC, and many more, and then allows website owners to redistribute this content in a variety of flexible formats.

At its simplest, all a website owner has to do is insert a single line of code into their page where they want the news items to display, and this will automatically be updated with links to the latest stories.

For those wanting more control, there are a variety of customisation options. You can change the look and feel of the news box by specifying different colours for different elements, and can set specific dimensions. If you choose not to fix the dimensions then the box will automatically flow to fill the full width of the parent element, allowing it to adapt easily to both desktop and mobile displays.

As well as controlling the look and feel of the news box, webmasters can also choose what content it displays. By default, it will display the latest headlines, but it can also be set to display stories from the last three months related to specific keyword(s), or even related to the title, meta description, and / or meta keywords of the page it is on. This last option is particularly useful if the code is being placed on multiple different pages on a site, as the same piece of code can be re-used on each page, but the content displayed will vary according to each page's specific focus.

The stories cover opportunities for writers, insights into the publishing industry, articles on creative writing, and other related topics. The stories are all selected by human beings, not computers, which means you don't get endless articles about the "writing" being on the wall for this politician or that sports team (or the ubiquitous "Writing on the Wall for Graffiti Artists", that every headline-writer the world over seems to think they are the first to have thought of); or "writing" off debt; or any other irrelevant articles that just happen to mention the word "writing" or "publishing" in an unrelated context. 

The articles all come with source citation, and link directly back to the source material, which may help improve the perception of your page for both readers and search engines. Most also include a thumbnail image from the original article, enriching the appearance of your page.

The code is freely available now at https://www.firstwriter.com/news/syndication.shtml