SBS Blogroll
This widget organizes your blogroll for you, displaying the entries in chronological order. That way, you can see how long ago someone last update his blog, and you can tell that you shouldn’t visit it because it has been a month since he last posted. Or, conversely, you can see that your sister updated her blog today so you know you should go read it.
Steps to install this widget:
- Download the plugin zip file or the plugin PHP file or go to the official WordPress site
- Upload `sbs-blogroll.php` to your Plugins directory (usually `/wp-content/plugins/`)
- Login to your WordPress blog
- Find the `Plugins` menu option at your dashboard
- Use it to activate the SBS Blogroll plugin
- Find the `Appearance` menu option at your dashboard
- Select it, then select `Widgets`
- Drag SBS Blogroll over to your sidebar configuration and set it up (see below).
- Enter the CSS to make the blogroll look good (see below below).
Steps to setup your blogroll with feeds:
- Find the RSS or Atom feed link for an interesting blog or website. Copy the link to the clipboard.For example, look at the bottom of this blog. You’ll see some text that says “Entries (RSS)”. If you right-click on that and select “Copy Link Location” or “Copy shortcut”, it will get put in your invisible clipboard.
- Paste that link into the widget configuration. It will look something like “http://www.someblogsite.com/feed”
- Repeat the previous two steps for as many other blogs/websites as you want on your blogroll
- Remember, you probably want Entries RSS, not Comments RSS. Most Blogger blogs have it as “Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)” at the bottom of the main page (not individual posts).
- The feed link may be at the bottom of the page or in the sidebar or in the header. It may also have this icon
.
CSS Code
.sbsblogroll-feeditem {
margin-bottom: 0;
}
.sbsblogroll-feeditem img {
float: left;
height: 16px;
width: 16px;
margin-top: 0.7em;
}
.sbsblogroll-feeditem a {
margin-left: 4px;
}
.sbsblogroll-feedname {
font-weight: bold;
text-decoration: none;
margin-left: 0px;
margin-top: 15px;
}
.sbsblogroll-feedname a {
color: #555;
text-decoration: none;
}
.sbsblogroll-feedname a:hover {
color: #000;
text-decoration: underline;
}
.sbsblogroll-date {
text-align: right;
width: 98%;
}
This is Alpha, the first-born, when he was 1YO.
This is Beta, the second-born, when he was 1YO.
This is Gamma, the third-born, when he was 6MO.
December 25th, 2009 at 5:22 pm
I’m using this plugin at http://marinerosbouzas.com and is working nice, i love it, but i found a small bug in the way of how is checked if favicon must be shown. I upload a patch and the full file on my blog. I hope that you can fix de bug in the next release.
December 27th, 2009 at 12:55 am
Thanks for the bug-fix help. I have updated the plugin at WordPress, so new downloads should be correct.
December 31st, 2009 at 4:03 am
Hi!
First of all, thank you so much for doing this. It’s exactly what I’ve been looking for a long time.
Unfortunatedly, I get this error message when I try to use it: Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 33554432 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 272909 bytes) in /home6/lamirad2/public_html/wp-includes/wp-db.php on line 529
Could you give me a hand with this?
Thank you and have a happy New Year!
January 3rd, 2010 at 6:11 pm
Ok, I solved it on my own :)
But now, I’d like to know if it’s possible to have a “target_blank” added to the links, for it feels like losing traffic not to.
I hope you’re still having a nice 2010.
January 4th, 2010 at 4:37 am
@Pablo I’m also getting the same error, how did you fix it?
January 4th, 2010 at 10:16 pm
Sorry for the delay in replying. My computer stopped working on New Year’s Eve and I just repaired it today.
What was the fix? I will put that, along with an option to have the links open in a new window, in the next release.
Thanks!
January 5th, 2010 at 1:16 am
Oh, that’d be great!
To solve the error, I modified the wp-settings archive increasing the allocated memory in line 13 from 32MB to 64MB. That solved the issue (for good I hope). I hope it helps.
Thank you for creating useful software!
January 5th, 2010 at 11:41 pm
I can’t release a new wp-settings.php file with the SBS Blogroll plugin, as plugins and admin files handled separately. But I will add this to the readme file so it appears in the FAQs.
January 7th, 2010 at 6:24 pm
[...] up is the blogroll. Currently I’m using SBS Blogroll, a nice wee widget that runs off and gets post titles and dates from the blogs I follow (via rss [...]
January 25th, 2010 at 4:04 pm
Hi! I am currently working on moving my blog & files from Typepad to Wordpress. Love this plug-in you created!! I have one question though….. How do I rearrange the blogroll items so that the name of the Blog or Website is above the link? As is it shows the link and then the name of the site below it……
January 25th, 2010 at 11:46 pm
Mine always shows the name of the blog above the link, so I don’t know why yours is showing it the other way.
I looked at your site, but I did not see where SBS Blogroll was being used. Did you copy the CSS from this page into your stylesheet? Is the display style Chronological or By Feed? What options to do you have checked?
January 26th, 2010 at 10:26 am
I have not yet released my new blog template…. as soon as I am ready I am going to roll the domain name sweetsauer.com to the new blog. You can see the new blog here for now:
http://box687.bluehost.com/~sweetsau/
PS I have NOT added the CSS code, where exactly should I put it in my CSS file?
January 27th, 2010 at 12:23 am
At the bottom of either the style.css file or the plugins.css file. But I removed the CSS from my blog and the links still appeared below the names on the blogroll, so I doubt it’s the CSS.
I checked your bluehost site and didn’t see any content in the blogroll – no names, no links. Maybe tomorrow I will download the theme that you are using and see if I have any problems with it.
January 27th, 2010 at 8:16 am
I am having a heck of a time trying to get this going!!! I can put maybe 10-15 feeds before I get the fatal memory error (so I removed them all for the time being until I figure this out). I have NO IDEA where to find the WP-settings to increase my memory limit like Pablo mentioned…… is that in my Wordpress admin or is that through my host??
January 27th, 2010 at 12:16 pm
It’s not done through WordPress. You’ll need to get to the wp-settings.php file that is in the root directory of your WordPress installation, either by FTP or by using cPanel’s File Manager or however your host allows you to modify files. Change WP_MEMORY_LIMIT and you should be good.
More details are at http://codex.wordpress.org/Editing_wp-config.php#Increasing_memory_allocated_to_PHP
February 2nd, 2010 at 7:51 pm
My CSS skills are terrible. Could anyone advise how to make it so the feed titles in SBS could be made bold?
February 4th, 2010 at 10:23 pm
Sure – just scroll up a bit on this page to the example CSS code.
The blog title has the class sbsblogroll-feedname and the example code already has it as font-weight: bold; .
The post titles have the class sbsblogroll-feeditem a and the example just has margin-left: 4px; .
Copy the font-weight line from the feedname and paste it into the feeditem-a section.
February 5th, 2010 at 12:19 am
Great. Thank you very much.