Recent Comments Widget for Blogger.

There are many benefits to having the latest comments on your blog displayed on your main page. In Blogger comments are only seen on post pages so visitors coming to your home page cannot see them unless they click on the small "COMMENTS" link after every post. If you include a Recent Comments section in your sidebar or your posts column then visitors can immediately read them and hopefully become impressed enough to return or click on them to read the posts.



When readers see the importance you give to their comments by displaying them on the main page of your blog many will take that as an incentive to post a comment.



There are two ways to include a Recent Comments Widget on the main page : The easy method and the slightly difficult Geek method..............

FEED WIDGET (EASY) METHOD

Blogger has the feed widget which you can add to your blog like any other page element. Blogger also puts out post, label and comment feeds. Combining these two we can construct a Recent Comments widget by pasting the URL of your blog comments feed into a feed page element.



To do this login to Dashboard of Blogger and click on Layout link for your blog. This will open the Page Elements subtab of Template tab. Click on 'Add Page Element' link in sidebar. In the popup window click on Feed widget. In the Feed page element window paste the comments feed URL of your blog which is :

http://YOURBLOGNAME.blogspot.com/feeds/comments/default

Instead of 'YOURBLOGNAME' put actual name of your blog. Choose the number of comments you want to show. The maximum is five at present and OK it. View Blog.
If you want to show comments only from one post put this URL in it :

http://YOURBLOGNAME.blogspot.com/feeds/THISPOSTID/comments/default

Replace the CAPS.
To get your post ID login to Dashboard and click on Posts. Click on Edit link of the post you want or place your mouse cursor over the link and look at the status bar of your browser bottom left hand corner. (Enable status bar from View--->Status Bar menu of your browser.) You will see something like this :

http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx&postID=7938018824060714868

Copy down the number after postID and paste it in your comment feed url. You will then get the comments from this post only. The disadvantage of this method is that you get five comments only. The advantage is it is easy.

The FEED-TO-JAVASCRIPT (GEEK) METHOD

This is the second method and it is slightly more complicated. It enables you to have much more than five comments in your widget and also to customize it in the colors you want. It also includes a NOSCRIPT tag in case the viewer has Javascript disabled in his browser.




This method can also be used to add content from your other blogs or any other site which puts out a feed to your blog. Since the new Blogger layout templates do not have a Previous Posts section in the sidebar like the Classic Blogger templates you can use this method to add it.




For this go to http://www.bucks.edu/feed/build.php. In the URL field enter the url of your blog's RSS feed which is :

http://yourblogname.blogspot.com/feeds/comments/default?alt=rss

Substitute actual blog name in place of yourblogname. Verify the URL of your feed before using this form. You can do this by opening the above URL in your browser. It should show all your blog posts. If not check Settings----->Site Feed in your blog and verify that it is set to Short or Full.



Then selct the settings you want :

Show channel? (yes/no/title) Display information about the publisher of the feed (yes=show the title and description; title= display title only, no=do not display anything)

Number of items to display. Enter the number of items to be displayed (enter 0 to show all available)

Show/Hide item descriptions? How much? (0=no descriptions; 1=show full description text; n>1 = display first n characters of description; n=-1 do not link item title, just display item contents)

Use HTML in item display? ("yes" = use HTML from feed and the full item descriptions will be used, ignoring any character limit set above; "no" = output is text-only formatted by CSS; "preserve paragraphs" = no HTML but convert all RETURN/linefeeds to
to preserve paragraph breaks)

Show item posting date? (yes/no) Display the date the item was added to the feed.

Target links in the new window? (n="no, links open the same page", y="yes, open links in a new window", "xxxx" = open links in a frame named 'xxxx', 'popup' = use a JavaScript function popupfeed() to open in new window)

After selecting the settings you want click on Preview and check to see that content from your blog is being displayed. Then click on Generate Javascript button. Copy all the code. Login to your Dashboard and click on Layout. Click add Page element link in sidebar and choose Html/Javascript option. In the popup window paste the code, give it a Title and OK it. View Blog. See picture below :


Click on picture to enlarge it. Number 1 Feed is using the second method and shows much more comments than Number 2 Feed which has been added using the Blogger feed widget. To add a page element to the posts column you will have to alter the code as shown in 10 Quick Tips for Smarter Blogging.

STYLE THE FEED WIDGET

You can change the colors of the feed widget added using the second method above. To do this go to Template------>Edit Html and scroll down to your sidebar code for the feed widget. It will look something like this :

<b:widget id='HTML5' locked='false' title='RECENT COMMENTS' type='HTML'/>

Look for the number id of the widget. In this case it is HTML5. You will use this to add code to CSS part of your template to style the widget. To do this add this code just before ]]></b:skin> tag in your template :

#HTML5 .rss_item {
padding:.5em 0em 1.5em;
width:500px;
}
#HTML5 .rss_items {
margin-left:5px;
}

The CSS classes are :

.rss_box defines the bounding div for the entire display- use to define borders, fill, etc.
.rss_title the title of the feed and link style if displayed. Use with variants of rss_title a:link, rss_title a:hover, etc for rollover styles
.rss_items defines the unordered list <ul>...</ul> for the feed items- use to define the padding/margins for items.
.rss_item display of each feed item description and title, <li>...</li> as well as the channel description, if displayed.
.rss_item a: variant for the item title and link style
.rss_date defines the display of item posting dates

Just add your widget id before the clases above which represent the elements in the feed.

Advantages of Beta Blogger.

The Advantages of the new Beta Blogger are...............

many and I have tried to list a few of them here :

ON THE SPOT EDITING

. Login to your dashboard by going to Beta Blogger. Click on View Blog next to the name of your blog. Your blog opens as it would if you accessed it by goingdirectly to its URL. However there is a difference. Under each post and page element you will see a crossed screwdriver and spanner symbol.

In New Blogger you will see your email address in the Navbar when you are logged in to Blogger. Others do not see it and you also do not see it if you are logged out of Blogger.

THIS SYMBOL IS NOT SEEN IF YOU ACCESS YOUR BLOG WITHOUT LOGGING IN. Clicking on this symbol will enable you to make any changes to your page element. To know what is a page element see What are Widgets? There is also a pencil symbol below each of your posts which if clicked takes you directly to the Post Editor so that you can change the content.

If you see a typo in your webpage or if you want to add a missing heading to your page element click on the pencil symbol at the bottom of your posts and instantly the post will open up for editing. This is one-click access to push-button publishing. You do not have to drill down through lots of menus and sub menus to make changes to your blog. Further the changes you make are instantly saved and published. There is no need to further press a 'Publish' button. Click on the pencil to open up post for editing. Make the changes you want and select Publish. Click View Blog and you can instantly view the post and if there are still more typos click the pencil again.

LABELS.

These are what used to be called Categories. You can label your posts by creating them in the bottom frame of the Post Editor. Labels are important keywords in your posts which enable the viewer to instantly locate the post relevant to his topic of intrest. They work like the index of a book and clicking on a label instantly takes the reader to all the posts which contain that word/label. So label all your posts and then Add a Label widget to the sidebar of your blog to make it more reader-friendly. You can see Labels in action in the right hand sidebar of this blog. Labels are also called as Tags elsewhere.

MORE CONTROL OVER VIEWERS.

You can now control who can view your blog by making it totally private or only allow access to certain viewers. To do this go to Settings------>Permissions and set your readers settings and Save.

FEEDS FOR COMMENTS.

These are feeds for comments which will enable your viewers to follow the comments on your blog and to take part in discussions without having to visit your blog to check on your comments. The comments will be delivered to them automatically as they are made. To set this go to Settings---->Site Feeds. To enable the reader to find these feeds add the following line of code to your sidebar in a HTML widget :

<p id="blogfeeds"><$BlogFeedsVertical$></p>

This will show up in your sidebar like this

Subscribe to
Comments [Atom]
Posts [Atom]

The above is for Classic Templates. For the new layouts take a look at Feedburner and Blog Feeds and What is Subscribe to Posts Atom.

ADDING LINKS

is now easier via the Links Page Element. You can add 12 types of Page Elements including third party codes easily using the Layout Tab.

LAYOUT WYSIWYG (Graphical) PAGE EDITOR

makes it possible for you to drag and drop widgets or Page Elements into new Sections of your blog or rearrange their positions within their Sections. This along with the Fonts and Colors tab are the two new features enabling users to customize their blogs. Using Fonts and Colors you can change the colors of different areas of the blog and its fonts.

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