PZ Myers. 2005 May 08. A little tinkering with the right sidebar…. <http://pharyngula.org/index/weblog/a_little_tinkering_with_the_right_sidebar/>. Accessed 2008 Nov 20.

Posted on M00o93H7pQ09L8X1t49cHY01Z5j4TT91fGfr on Sunday, May 08, 2005

A little tinkering with the right sidebar…

I'm trying a different response to the Great Blogroll Controversy. My complete blogroll has been moved off to a separate page. It's been expanded greatly by adding the text of the rss/xml/atom description tag to it, so now there's some summary attached to each link. I don't create the description text; if you've got a weblog with syndication, you define it.

Of course, now the whole thing is just too huge to pack into the sidebar. Instead, I've whipped up a little code to extract a random dozen out of the whole list and display them over there to the right. The random set changes every 10 or 20 minutes.

The bad news: this does mean getting mentioned on my blogroll doesn't count for much as a data point on those weblog aggregating services like the Truth Laid Bear Ecosystem or Technorati (actually, since I've also opted out of the TTLB, I don't count there at all anyway). Sorry 'bout that.

The good news: it does mean the web page is even smaller and tighter and faster to load. I also think it'll benefit the function of the blogroll in making it a place to spot new weblogs: the extra text has the potential to make the listings a bit more informative, and although they will show up less often and randomly, at least they won't be buried in that smear of links anymore. Face it, you guys never looked much at that, anyway…but if the whim strikes you now, just click on the Complete Blogroll link to see it.

I'm also thinking of adding a rotating set of manually updated links—a "Weblogs of the Week" block, where I'd just have a small number of static links that are kept up for a week, no more. I might get around to that in the next day or two right now.

It was easy enough, so I just plugged it in. Every Sunday I'll switch around the links in the "Weblogs of the Week" box to the right to something different from the blogroll. This is not to be regarded as an honor or something to be lobbied for; there are no criteria, no predictable ways to get on it, and links will be picked solely by me and solely on whim. It might be because I've just added a site to the blogroll; because something that day struck my fancy; because I went eeny-meeny-miney-moe; because the ravens spelled out the name of the blog on the street in the entrails of a dead squirrel. I will aspire to maintain the enigmatic mysterious ineffableness of it all.

The only thing I will guarantee is that I won't put a weblog on it because they get 50,000 hits/day.

Posted by PZ Myers on 05/08 at 11:47 AM
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  1. Looks nice!
    #: Posted by  on  05/08  at  12:46 PM
  2. I like the annotation listed with each weblog, and that it is coming from our syndication feeds so we can control it.

    I'm going to look at the Feministe style of multi-link posts at least once a week, and then I publish people's URLs with their comments. These supposedly should be picked up by the services.

    But I won't glue opt-out code in my web page, though when I went to look for it, I kept getting server errors.
    #: Posted by Shelley  on  05/08  at  01:15 PM
  3. This is what I did a couple of months ago - moved my Blogroll to a separate page - actually a separate BLOG! Recently I also moved the PBA aggregator to that same page as it was getting really long. My Tecnorati dropped 100 links overnight but I don't care. I've been thinking about getting out of TTLB, too. I'll do that next time I feel brave to open the template (when I am on a decent computer). I'll have to figure out the way to do something similar to your list, though, as it is more informative which helps with a really long blogroll.
    #: Posted by coturnix  on  05/08  at  01:16 PM
  4. I actually used your blogroll for adventures out into the wide world of blogs, but I am quite happy to click on a link to get to them.
    Or alternatively, I could just go directly to that page, and ignore all the posts here.
    #: Posted by  on  05/08  at  01:17 PM
  5. I am readying my ravens right now! Besides, the world has too danged many squirrels, anyway.
    #: Posted by GrrlScientist  on  05/08  at  02:14 PM
  6. So, I clicked on the blogroll page link and then got lost over there for an hour ....
    #: Posted by  on  05/08  at  02:23 PM
  7. I am readying my ravens right now! Besides, the world has too danged many squirrels, anyway.


    *gulp*
    #: Posted by  on  05/08  at  02:39 PM
  8. Looks good!
    #: Posted by ang6666  on  05/08  at  03:28 PM
  9. So, how does a regular reader get added to your blogroll, anyway ::bats eyelashes seductively::?
    #: Posted by Paul  on  05/08  at  06:47 PM
  10. I prefer small bills and many of them, but barring that, e-mail me a link to your syndication file.
    #: Posted by PZ Myers  on  05/08  at  06:58 PM
  11. Hmmm...I like the way the summarized blogs look, but if your main blog page is going to scroll down and down the page anyway, why not have some eye candy in the 1st and 3rd columns?

    Also, you have likely already noticed that there a lot of raw hypertext showing up in both the random 12 and the main blogroll page.
    #: Posted by Jenn  on  05/08  at  08:01 PM
  12. There's not much I can do about the html -- since I'm just taking in the description tag people assign in their syndication, I just have to put up with it.

    I do have a little more room, now, don't I. I'll have to think about what to do with it.
    #: Posted by PZ Myers  on  05/08  at  08:25 PM
  13. Thanks PZ, it makes your links a lot more tractable. In fact I've just clicked on two of the random dozen that I'd never click on without the description.
    #: Posted by Alon Levy  on  05/09  at  12:24 AM
  14. Since--as you note--you have a little more room, might I suggest a category archive. Since I have been reading this blog you have posted an enormous amount of information. There have been times when I remembered that a particular reference or bit of information had been posted here and I have had the devils own time finding it. I think a category archive would make a useful addition.
    #: Posted by  on  05/09  at  07:34 AM
  15. I'm with you on the feeling that linking blogs isn't evil or oppressive. In fact, my own sidebar features more blogs "off the beaten track" than not. That's as much an aid to myself as a way to promote some interesting reading. Though I think it's probably time for an update!
    #: Posted by Ancarett  on  05/09  at  08:58 AM
  16. I went to the office this morning and looked at it on a decent computer. It looks good! Blog descriptions are (usually) helpfull - I wonder How they'd look in pirate mode wink

    BTW, I thought you have put Circadiana on a long time ago, as it is more purely "sciency" than Science And Politics. It's just the regular atom feed for a regular Blogger blog: http://circadiana.blogspot.com/
    #: Posted by coturnix  on  05/09  at  02:02 PM
  17. It seems history really does repeat itself. At least once a year someone has a conniption over blogrolls, who's on 'em an who isn't, and how lower ranked bloggers are being overlooked. Truth is that it takes time to build up a readership and the best thing you can do is to update regularly and keep on writing. I never thought I'd see the number of visitors that SEB gets on a regular basis and I'm still far from being what's known as an A-list blogger, but that's not the main reason why I blog anyway.

    I moved my blogroll off to a subpage a while ago as well just so I could speed up page rendering a bit. I still need to go through and redesign my template and speed it up even further, but every little bit helps.
    #: Posted by Les  on  05/10  at  12:12 PM