Word Count Widget

.

National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) is upon us. Are you ready? You might have everything you need, outlines, character sketches, a working computer, a months worth of high octane coffee, writing buddies, what could you be missing?

How about a handy word counter?

After some research I couldn’t find a readily available Word Count widget for WordPress blogs that I really liked. What I found were…ok. Not great, not pretty, most were sparse, limited and awkward. But when I came across something I liked I looked up the page source information and found the code they used. After much fiddling I had some options.

Here’s what I came up with that gave me the word counters on my blog. Feel free to use them to your hearts content!

To use it, go into your dashboard, then open your widgets. Put a text box in whatever sidebar you’d like then paste this basic code in. I’ve put all of the changeable elements in Bold Red.

<h1>W.I.P. #1</h1>
<h1>Category Title</h1>
<h2>Novel Title</h2>
<div>

<!–Progress Bar–>

10px;width:98%;border-color:black;border-style:solid;border-width:2px;”>

10px;width:

50%;background-color:green;”>

</div><!–END .scribometer_bar–>
</div><!–END .scribometer_border–>

<!–Details–>
<H4>First Draft</H4>
<H4>5,000 of 10,000 words (50%) complete</H4>

This is what it should look like:

Why I like this so much?

• I can add as much information as I want between the <h#> </h#> s  (W.I.P #1, Category Title, Novel Title). The amount of lines is endless as long as you have the header markers
• I can change the color of the bar so each WIP can be distinguished easily.
• Again, I can add as much information under the bar (First Draft) as long as it’s between the header markers
• Lastly the calculations aren’t automatic but they’re pretty easy. 5,000 / 10,000 will give you 50%, ~~  8,999 / 50,000 will give you 18%, etc.

What do you think? Is this something you can use?