Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Working on my Blogroll

I've been working on my blogroll like I promised. I decided just to use Blotanical's widget for the blogs that I follow there. I'm using it since it doesn't take up a ton of space; it is easy to drop in; and it updates itself if I update my Faves (thanks Stuart). There are a few on this list that haven't posted much recently. I'm not going to remove them yet since we are under a blanket of snow and no gardening posts seems reasonable right now.

I'm still working on my non-Blotanical blogroll. I chose to put in a drop down list so you won't have to scroll down terribly if you want something else from my sidebar. Do people like that choice? Do you prefer to see them all at once? I personally hate scrolling so try to minimize that. If I could put my labels in a drop down list I would.

As to the blogs on the list, I'm trying to keep to the people that have been keeping up with posting, at least up to the end of the gardening season. Right now it is just alphabetical and as you can see I'm hardly done.

7 comments:

  1. I like the blotanical widget. My blog roll is so long it would be nice to have one that serves the same purpose yet takes up much less space.

    Have you used it long enough to know if it has any update problems? I have found the blogspot blog roll has a few glitches.

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  2. Looks good! I definitely prefer the drop down list rather than a fully posted list for the non-blotanicals.

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  3. Dan, The only weirdness I've found in the Blotanical list is when the name doesn't fit on a line it centers the whole thing. The other blogs are all left aligned. I just started using it on my blog. I don't "update it". It takes my list of favorite blogs from that site and adds them to the widget.

    My other blogroll is just simple handwritten HTML/javascript code. Nothing fancy. If it has update problems I can only blame myself for messing up the code. Though I did find that blogger can eat code and spit it back out not working. It annoys me since why have a place where you can insert HTML/javascript then not accept what they write. I had versions of my drop down box that I couldn't use, because it would take my code and rewrite it to not work.

    Iris, I think it is pretty easy to use too. I have to add the country of each person though. I think that would be useful. Sometimes I want to find non-US blogs and it can be hard.

    I wonder if I should sort by country first then name, or name first and just put a country next to it.

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  4. Hi Daphne, the blogroll can be overwhelming. Good for you finding a way that works for your needs. When I moved my blog from blogger to wordpress, all the posts and comments were so easy to move, a push of one button, the magic button they called it, those wordpress geeks are a humorous lot. Anyway, the sidebar stuff all had to be added one item at a time. Not so hard for most of the things, but the blogroll, yikes. It was so long that I just decided to add names as people came over from blogger to wordpress and left a comment. If anyone was on the blogger list and has not come to wordpress and left a comment, they did not get transferred over. I made the switch in September and am still getting some first time comments from people who were on the blogger list. Even now the list is so unwieldy, but contains many non Blotanical bloggers. I would like to add the country for non USA blogs someday. I wish there was an easier way too.
    Frances

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  5. Frances, Wow I just looked at your blogroll. It goes on forever. If I ever move at least transferring my blogroll ought to be easy. I have the code for it copied on my computer. I'll update it there and just cut and paste. It is the one nice thing about writing your own code. You can take it with you.

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  6. I've finished my blogroll. I hope it works. I'm not sure if I like the country abbreviations after the name, but they are there for a bit. If any of you have strong opinions one way or the other let me know.

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  7. Hi Daphne,Thanks for the link, Blotanical is new to me and I'm still working it out, but it looks like a lot of fun
    Cheers
    Btw 4 foot long icicles sounds way too cold for me.

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