This is a widget that brings up a little preview of a site into the sidebar. If you want to use this in a widget-less / static sidebar, give <a href="https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/blogintroduction-wordpress-plugin/" title="blogintroduction-wordpress-plugin">blogintroduction-wordpress-plugin</a> a chance. The link is chosen by random out of the links in the WordPress link-manager. You can specify a single link-category or use all categories for the random-link-base.
You can also decide to show invisible/private links. This is for the case you want to show links as a preview you don’t want to show in the linkroll.
If you want and if there is a description for the link done in the link-description-field it would be shown.
A refreshing via AJAX could be enabled with a specific time (in seconds) when the next thumbnail would be loaded.
This widget uses the <a href="http://www.websnapr.com/" title="Website Thumbnais For Your Site" rel="nofollow ugc">websnapr</a>-Service for generating the thumbnail-images. Keep their <a href="http://www.websnapr.com/terms/" title="General Terms and Conditions for Websnapr" rel="nofollow ugc">term of use</a> in mind. You should get an API-Key for free from there to use this widget and get more then 80 snapshots per hour, with key it would be about 340 per hour (250.000 a month).
Since Version 0.3.0 you could also use the image-link stored in the link-manager for containing the link to the preview-image. If no link is given the widget would use websnapr as fall back.
If you want to translate the plugin, feel free to do it! Since Version 0.2.0 the Output is fully internationalized.
To see the widget working in a production-environment, visit the <a href="http://blog.huebel-online.de/" title="Blog of Kim Huebel" rel="nofollow ugc">author’s blog</a>.
If you want to leave a feedback, feel free to do this on the <a href="http://blog.huebel-online.de/blogintroduction-wordpress-widget/" title="Home of blogintroduction-wordpress-widget - Blog of Kim Huebel" rel="nofollow ugc">plugin’s homepage</a> of the author’s blog. Though the pages are in german, comments in english are wellcome, too.

blogintroduction

Shows a thumbnail of a blogroll/linkroll-entry by random

jsruok

Blog Introduction displays an introduction (heading and/or contents of certain 
page) before posts. Intro content comes from a designated page, please see below for examples.
An introduction can appear on your
<ul>
<li>home page (from page whose URL – aka permalink aka slug – is, by default, ‘blog-introduction’),</li>
<li>category archive pages (intro from page ‘yourcategoryurl-cat-intro’, e.g. category has ‘widgets’ slug, then intro comes from page that has slug ‘widgets-cat-intro’),</li>
<li>tag archive pages (intro from page ‘yourtagurl-tag-intro’, e.g. tag is ‘blue-widgets’, then use ‘blue-widgets-tag-intro’ as intro page slug), and</li>
<li>author archive pages (intro from page ‘yourauthorurl-author-intro’, e.g. author is ‘jsmith’, then use ‘jsmith-author-intro’ as intro page slug).</li>
</ul>
Hide these special pages by making them private.
Plugin options allow for you to:
<ul>
<li>Define who sees the introduction (everyone / logged in users only / visitors only).</li>
<li>Choose which parts (heading and/or content) you want to show.</li>
<li>Change the heading wrapper tag. </li>
<li>Define style (CSS) for various parts of intro.</li>
<li>Change where the home page’s intro is taken from, either by page id or its permalink. </li>
<li>Define home page’s the intro (instead of using a specific page).</li>
<li>Disable intro on home page and only use it on archive pages.</li>
</ul>
Default output (for home page):
<pre><code><div id='blog_introduction' class='blog-introduction-container'>
 <div id='blog_introduction_heading' class='blog-introduction-heading'>
 <h2></h2>
 </div>
 <div id='blog_introduction_content' class='blog-introduction-content'>
 
 </div>
</div>
</code></pre>
If you use the plugin, please rate it at WP Plugin Directory. Thanks!

Blog Introduction

Blog Introduction inserts a static intro before posts (on homepage or archive pages). Introduction content is taken from a designated page.

blogintroduction vs Blog Introduction