Another new addition to alexking.org in v2 is some link blog functionality. I really enjoy the timely commentary of link blogs like Ethan’s and John’s, and recently I’ve been wanting to add more commentary to more of the links I add to my weekly Around the web posts.
The link blog entries:
have a slightly different styling than my normal blog entries:
and they do not show up as the latest blog post on the home page.
In addition, the link on the title is to the external link, not my internal page for the entry. Comments are enabled for the link blog entries, and they all appear in my new Links topic (which, of course, as its own feed). I’ve also gone back and changed all of the Around the web posts to live in the Links topic as well.
I’m not ditching the Around the web weekly round-ups. Links that I don’t feel need timely commentary will still end up there.
We’ll see how it works out – feedback is welcome.
And yes, I’ve got this functionality abstracted out into a plugin, I hope to have it released sometime next week.
You new site is wonderful! I aspire to a fabulous WordPress blog, but am struggling getting it going! I love your galleries, which is what I need (I am looking for a creative blog to show off my latest work in galleries like your photos are in) and to publish my “daily” work. What plug in do you use to make the gallery on your blog?
I’ve seen link posts on any number of sites, and they are usually pretty well done. But, in my opinion (always), I don’t have much use for it. I already have an automatic list of my latest del.icio.us links, which works for the purpose; setting up a linkblog system would use essentially the same content as what I put on del.icio.us, and seems rather redundant.
Unless, of course, there’s some other angle I haven’t considered…?
Could you please add some marker to the link blog entries to make them stand out in RSS readers? I’d like to be able to see if a RSS item will link to an article by you or someone else. A simple [linkblog] in the title should do.
If you see the # link, you know the main link goes to the external site. I don’t want to change the titles in the feeds, but I’m open to other suggestions.
Alex,
I would very interested in your plugin. I tried to move my linkblog (www.midnightblog.com) off MT a while ago, but was stymied by the different handling of the tag. In MT I had the title in the tititle field, the link in the body field, and the commentary in the extendend entry field (which is a seperate field in the DB in MT. I’ll be very interested in seeing how you did it with WP.
Thanks,
Tim
Alex: I’ve run into two related issues:
1. The comment permalinks for linkblogged posts try to drive you to http://url.of/the/re[...]om-WordPress, which isn’t right; they need to be built on the URL from your permalink for discussion of the link’s contents here.
2. Commenting on a linkblog post pushes you to this same permalink, which sends the user to the link after a comment.
This is undoubtedly because WP 2.0.5+ has the POST of a comment return you to the permalink of the comment [which is … awesome].
Thought I’d report this here rather than with an email so others will know that you know about it and you won’t get 25 emails on it. 😉
I just spent a few minutes trying to figure out what these huge pounds signs were on your site. 🙂 They really overwhelm other elements on the page. Part of my confusion may be “Around the Web” has that syle, but it’s still a normal blog entry.
In RSS it’s pretty weird. I’m reading an entry from your blog, but if I click it I go somewhere else? I’m probably just not getting the linkblog concept, but it seems fairly strange.
Geof–
Looks like I’ve got some more hacking to do, thanks.
Brett–
Got a recommendation for an alternate icon? The hash symbol is fairly commonly used for links on sites I visit.
Linking to the external entry rather than the internal entry seems to be standard practice on link blogs. My personal experience as a reader is that I like having the link go to the external site in my feed reader – so that’s why I copied the style. 🙂
It’s mostly the huge size of the icon. It may also be the fact that those posts immediately start off indented like a blockquote.
When I first scanned the blog page, I thought the # entries were somehow comments on the post above it, and I was wondering which comments from the post were moved up, and why. The entry is indented, and immediately shifts from the current blog entry color to the opposite, sort of like comments.
Each blog entry, link blog or not, alternates color. I’m glad that the styling to indicate that these posts are different is working. 🙂
But the link blogs alternate color, then immediately alternate again within the entry, since you’re excerpting the other URL. That’s the part that’s a little confusing.
:shrug: It’s the same background color styling as the regular entries.
Plugin?
Still under construction at the moment.
Thanks. Didn’t want to bug you, but did want you to know that there is interest.
well my wordpress is back up and running and wow i need this plugin.
alex if you read this is there something you could use for donation besides paypal?
Did you look at the Donate page?
[…] updated some of the link blog functionality on this site, changing the icon and standardizing1 the “#” internal link and […]
[…] I’m reading to my weekly Around the web posts. Now I’ve got the same tools to create link blog entries as well. I’m lazy, I want to use the tools I’ve created – when I do that with an item […]