I have been having fun playing around with various features on my blog and have had a couple of questions about them, so I thought I would post about what I have done and where I got the information from.
Archives, Recent Posts & Recent Comments
First of all, I started thinking that the archives were looking a little long to scroll through, since they defaulted to having the current month open, but I didn’t like the weekly one any better, so I decided to put up a widget for recent posts and then just use a dropdown menu for the archives.
There are various tutorials for recent posts and recent comments, but before I got around to trying them out, I saw that Blogger had the option to add a feed to your blog. So I just added one page element with my posts feed and another page element with my comments feed and put them where I wanted them. Blogger will only show up to 5 items, so you probably need to use one of the tutorials if you want more than that or a different layout.
Label Cloud
When I first started blogging, I wasn’t sure if I liked tag clouds, but over time have grown to appreciate them. As I began using more labels, the list seemed too long and cumbersome to be user-friendly, so I used the instructions from phydeaux3 to make my Blogger labels appear in a tag cloud and then tweaked the color and size until I was happy with it. I think it is more visually appealing and intuitive that a straight list.
Table of Contents
I found this through Blogging Tips (this post has links to 15 different widgets or scripts for Blogger blogs, including the label cloud above). The Table of Contents instructions are from Beautiful Beta, and there is an update I will have to look at when my posts get over 100. I had to configure it a little since my column width is different from his, but it worked perfectly and was the easiest to install of everything I have do so far.
What’s cool about the TOC is that you toggle it on and off from the sidebar, but it shows up in the posts column. You can sort the list ascending or descending by post title or by date, or you can click on a label to see all posts with that label. To return to the full list from one label, you simply click the label header. Even if nobody else ever uses this, I will, and it only shows up if you click on it, so it doesn’t detract from the appearance of the site.
Related Posts
I have seen this in some of the feeds I read and inevitably find myself clicking on one of the related posts and usually finding something of interest that way. As Amanda mentions, there are two versions of this; I chose to go with Hoctro’s original hack. It is set to show up at the bottom of both the main page and the individual post pages, and I limited the number of labels and posts that would show from the original code to keep the list shorter. I’m not exactly sure how to put it in my feed, but that can wait for another day!
Other than being a lot of fun to learn, all of these things will hopefully work together to help people easily find what content is of most interest to them. So that’s what I have been up to lately, in between all the stuff of daily living.
Oh, I almost forgot, one other change I am making is to my user name, changing it from Holding It Together to WherestheBox. The choice of WherestheBox comes from my URL and the fact that I have been using that name in other places around the net, but the primary reason for the change has to do with a revelation I had recently about my need to just be myself and not try so hard to “hold it together” all the time. If I am going to do that, I felt I needed to let go of the name. Anyway, that’s my story, and I’m sticking to it!
I'm a mom with Asperger's raising an amazing son with autism, which means I'm basically the case manager/advocate/cheerleader/chauffeur. The rest of the time, you can usually find me with my nose in a book!
{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
This is all great info! I’ve been meaning to make some improvements on my sidebar. Thanks!
I am definitely going to have the Related Posts plug in installed soon. I hear it’s great for SEO too.
Recent Comments might also be a good idea, and excerpts too – almost every major blog I know has moved on to excerpts on the front page.
OK..I pressed Publish (above) before I could insert the URL!! Let’s try this again, shall we?!!
Those are some neat features. I really like the Table of Contents and Related Articles.
And the name change makes total sense… not only from your revelation, but also in continuity and ease of use for your readers. I remember that it took me a little while to get your names straight, as your url, your blog and your username were all different.
Hey, I hope you had some good downtime this afternoon! We ended up at a medium-sized park which was full of young kids. The boys had a blast!
Thanks for the feedback, all. I’m not sure how I feel about excerpts, although my posts do tend to get kind of long. First, I need to get some color on here since I’ve got the extra stuff working the way I want it.
Always room to learn something new!
Thanks sooo much for stopping by my blog! The link thru didn’t work (I’ll email you about that) so I found you the old-fashioned way and guessed at your URL. hehe
So glad I did because I found this post and learned a few things myself. I love finding new gadgets for my blog but it’s more because I’m a geek like that. My kitchen is decked out the same way – buy the gadgets regardless of whether I use them. hehe
Thanks for the new tips!
I’ve been wanting to make a label cloud (I like yours a lot!) but my template is html – I can’t use the new blogger. If you come across anything let me know. I’ve spent some time searching but have just become increasingly confused.