More Ways to Share the Link Love

Mar 13, 2015 | Technical & How-To

Want some link juice? Help yourself. The fridge is full of it. There’s a combination lock on the door – it’s pretty easy to figure out, if you’re not a spammer. Deviously difficult if you are one. But if you’re a fellow blogger who feels like being generous and sharing a little link love with other bloggers, this post in combination with Building a Better Blogroll and The Death of Hypertext? should certainly get you started.

Multi-Importer

RSS Multi-Importer by  Allen Weiss is the closest thing I’ve found to the dynamic blogroll widget on Blogspot that displays the blogroll with a snippet from the latest post, and bumps recently updated blogs to the top of the list. To use it, you’ll need to enter the RSS feed address for each blog (for WordPress blogs, that’s http://<domain>/<blog root>/feed/ – e.g., http://jahangiri.us/2013/feed; for Blogspot blogs, it’s http://<blogname>.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default )

You can see the results in action here:

blogger-links-books-authors

This plug-in is only available to self-hosted WordPress blogs. Set up is pretty straightforward and well documented within the plug-in, but there are many shortcode parameters to control how the blogs are displayed. Don’t be afraid to experiment until you get it just the way you like it.

Caution: This plug-in also lets you do some nefarious (and possibly illegal) things I don’t personally approve of, like use other people’s posts automatically to fill your own blog with content. You could use it to populate one blog with your own posts from another – so it’s really not the plug-in author’s fault if you abuse its power. Play nice – don’t use it to violate anyone’s copyrights. As you can see, here, I’m only displaying a short “teaser” – a little excerpt from each of the recent posts to tempt readers to visit the original blog.

Steal Links

Okay, that sounds terrible. Don’t steal! But it’s fine to copy lists of links – and you can see this in action on any of the pages listed under recommended on my top menu bar. In some cases, I’ve merely copied and pasted a list of links – for example, from https://blogging101march2015.wordpress.com/community-blogroll/ and https://photo101march2015.wordpress.com/community-blogroll/ – or grabbed the LinkyTools code to display an up-to-date list of A to Z Blogging Challenge participants. It’s easier to copy and paste than to type all that in, and from one WordPress blog to another, the hyperlinks will generally remain links.

One caveat: Be thoughtful, reasonable, and kind. If you run a blog that deals with adult themes (sex, violence, drugs, alcohol, smoking, gambling, lots of profanity), don’t link to others’ blogs without permission. Generally speaking, if a blog is public, the blogger wants people to visit, read, and comment. But they may not appreciate being associated with strongly controversial content. Use your skills for good, not evil. If there’s any doubt, ask first. Remove links on request.

CommentLuv

See the list of “Top Commentluvvers (30 Days)”? Those folks get top billing – over the blogroll – because they are actively engaged readers who are having conversations on my posts. This requires the CommentLuv plug-in (I’m using the Premium version, which also does a fantastic job of eliminating most spam comments). CommentLuv also lets you reward commenters by giving them an optional backlink with every comment.

Holly Jahangiri

Holly Jahangiri is the author of Trockle, illustrated by Jordan Vinyard; A Puppy, Not a Guppy, illustrated by Ryan Shaw; and the newest release: A New Leaf for Lyle, illustrated by Carrie Salazar. She draws inspiration from her family, from her own childhood adventures (some of which only happened in her overactive imagination), and from readers both young and young-at-heart. She lives in Houston, Texas, with her husband, J.J., whose love and encouragement make writing books twice the fun.

17 Comments

  1. Rachel

    Hi Holly, your blog is looking fantastic with all the widgets and recent posts/comments etc. Just wondering what’s the difference between “blogs that I follow” and the blogroll? I’ve got the blogs that I follow in my sidebar so do I still need a blogroll as well?

    Reply
    • HollyJahangiri

      “Blogs I Follow” only applies to WordPress.com blogs you’ve subscribed to (Followed) in the WordPress.com Reader. You can USE that as your blogroll. But if you want to include Blogspot blogs, or self-hosted WordPress blogs (like mine), or blogs/websites on other platforms, you’ll need to use Links. You can export/import your “Blogs I Follow” into Links, and mix those with manually added links or other OPML files to create a bigger blogroll. Hope that makes sense!

      Reply
  2. Rachel

    Thanks Holly, that makes sense. So I clicked on links in the widget but then I couldn’t see where to paste the URL link from a blogspot blog that I follow. When I originally clicked on blogroll and link name etc all these links came up automatically and I had no idea what they were.

    Reply
    • HollyJahangiri

      Right – the Links are in Links (see the Dashboard menu item called Links) – don’t try to alter them from the widget. The widget is used to display them, not to create them.

      Reply
  3. Rachel

    Thank you. I will try and link yours and the blogspot one now. Wish me luck!!

    Reply
  4. Mia

    Yes! Thank you! I’m terrible at this stuff but I want it all for my blog! I’m gonna try it this weekend.

    Reply
    • HollyJahangiri

      Good! You know where to find me if you need any help. 🙂

      Reply
  5. Rachel

    It worked! Now, just one more question (I promise). How do I get rid of the other links that automatically just appeared in the blogroll? It looks like most of them are wordpress links.
    Thanks!
    Rachel

    Reply
    • HollyJahangiri

      Get rid of the Meta widget, and/or delete them from Links. (Record them somewhere, though – you may want to visit them, yourself, some day!)

      Reply
  6. Patricia Stoltey

    Hi Holly. I love your CommentLuv plugin and plan to add it to my new website/blog which is in development. Currently I use the Blogger blogroll that shows a blog’s post title and rotates new posts to the top of the list. It’s a great courtesy to our blog visitors.

    Reply
    • HollyJahangiri

      The RSS Multi-Importer acts in much the same way, Patricia. I agree – that’s the only widget I really missed from Blogspot. You’d think WP would have offered something similar.

      Reply
    • HollyJahangiri

      Patricia, note that there is a FREE version of CommentLuv and the premium version (which is what’s linked to in the post). The premium version (which Marian Allen also has) includes several plug-ins in one, with some pretty awesome anti-spam capabilities. It’s one of the few plug-ins I’ve felt was worth paying for, over the years. (And Andy Bailey, its author, is a developer well worth supporting.)

      Reply
      • Patricia Stoltey

        Thanks for the extra info. I’m just beginning to learn all about plugins for WordPress.

        Reply
      • HollyJahangiri

        Truth is, there are so many plug-ins for WordPress you could drown in them. Be very selective. Try them one at a time, make sure they do what you want them to do, make a keep or toss decision, then deactivate and delete the ones you do not want. Nothing like trying to debug a problem and having to deactivate everything and reactivate one by one just to backtrack and figure it out. (When I say “one at a time,” I don’t mean one a day – but install, activate, configure, look at it, hammer on it, test it, be sure you want it.) The more plug-ins you have installed, the less efficient your blog is. I have about as many as is healthy for a blog to have. 🙂 Periodically, I try new ones and let go of things I’m not using anymore. There are lots of fun things to play with on WordPress.

        Reply
  7. sandy

    Why use a plug in and have the added risk of spam etc. The regular blog roll thing with blogspot works great and has always given you the option to have just the name and title, or a snipet and you can choise what type of a list you what…ie alphabetical or date order. I don’t see an advantage of adding an outside widget? What’s the difference? I’m out and about visiting today, gearing up for the a-z challenge.

    Reply
    • HollyJahangiri

      Well, the CommentLuv Premium plug-in is also my best anti-spam measure, by far. So the CommentLuvvers widget, being part of that, doesn’t hurt a thing. The first is really just a customizable RSS Reader. I have used it longer than I’ve known how to import that WP Reader links into Links (here) – keep in mind, this is self-hosted WordPress and doesn’t have exactly the same features as a WordPress.com blog, so the “Blogs I Read” widget that’s built in over there doesn’t work here unless you add – you guessed it – a plug-in. 🙂

      Reply

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