A widget fit for a Healthwatch

You'll probably already know that at Care Opinion we like sharing.

We think the web is built for sharing, and when patients and carers generously share their stories with us, the least we can do is share them as widely as we can to make a difference.

For a few years now we've provided widgets - allowing you to embed stories and ratings about services on your own web pages. Quick and easy to set up, free to use. You can see an example on the Heartlands Hospital page.

Quite a few local healthwatches use our widgets, so we thought it might be nice if you could theme the widget to match healthwatch national branding.

How to theme your widget

It isn't too hard! Just follow these steps:

1. Search for the stories you want in your widget. For example, if you are building a widget for Healthwatch Tameside you might start with this search:

Stories from people living in Tameside

2. Click the "make a widget" button at the lower left of the search page to view the widget builder.

3. At the bottom of the widget buider you'll see a box containing the embed code. That's the code you need to embed the widget on your own site.

4. The widget will display in Care Opinion colours, unless you set the theme to healthwatch. This is simple but fiddly - you add some magic words into the embed code like this:

Before

<iframe src="/widget/opinions?pagesize=4&frompopulation=00bt" allowTransparency="true" width="600" height="750" frameborder="0">You must have a browser that supports iframes to view the Care Opinion widget</iframe>

After

Carefully add the text in bold below, without any spaces:

<iframe src="/widget/opinions?pagesize=4&frompopulation=00bt&theme=healthwatch" allowTransparency="true" width="600" height="750" frameborder="0">You must have a browser that supports iframes to view the Care Opinion widget</iframe>

5. Now take your cunningly edited embed code and, er, embed it in your web page. And that's it.

Hope that helps - let us know if you plan to do it, and we'll help out if needed.