Welcome to the first post of the new BMJ Journals Web Development blog. This is the place to stay up-to-date with the goings-on of the journal websites and get to grips with our latest innovations.

The last few weeks have seen the implementation of two new widgets across our specialist journals. You may be wondering what on earth a widget is. Fear not, it’s likely that you’ve already seen widgets, and recognise them, even if you don’t know them by name. Ever seen a quiz or a game on a friend’s Facebook wall? A countdown to an event on a co-workers blog? These are all products of widget technology; simple and useful applications that can be embedded on a webpage, blog or social media profile.

Widgets are used at the bottom of our homepages to display the latest articles from each journal’s Online First, Current Issue and Most Frequently Read RSS feeds. If a journal has its own blog or podcasts, widgets are used to pull updates directly onto that journal’s homepage. They help to keep our sites looking fresh and up-to-date with minimal editorial input.

Most of the specialist websites now contain a doc2doc widget at the bottom of their homepage, which contains the latest discussions from the doc2doc online community and a BMJ Case Reports widget, which displays the latest Case Reports published in the BMJ Case Reports journal. Please feel free to share your thoughts on our use of widgets by leaving comments below.

Next week: Twitter accounts for every journal…