Blog Rolls – Step by Step

Hilary, a handmade seller online at Etsy.com, shared a list of her favorite blogs and why incorporating a blog roll may be a good idea for your blog.  Hilary is a blogger dedicated to helping handmade sellers sell more online on her site Haptree and Me, as well as on Craft Blog UK.

In this article, Hilary shows us how to create a blog roll – step by step!

“There are a few options to choose from, but in essence this is a very straightforward gadget,” Hilary writes on Craft Blog UK.  Below are the step Hilary lays out for bloggers:

1. In your Blogger dashboard click “Layout”.
2. Choose the location of your blog roll.  Then, click “add gadget” for that area.
3. Choose the widget titled: Blog List “Show off what you read with a blogroll of your favorite blogs.” You can find this widget on the first page of gadgets called “Basics.”
4. Now, customize your blog roll.  You can customize the following items:
   Title. Hilary says many people have something along the lines of “Great Online Reading” or “Recommended Reading”.  She suggests titling your blog roll something a little more inventive than the default “My Blog List”.
   Sort. “Unless you have a very long list of blogs that benefit from sorting alphabetically because you are using them as a directory,” she writes, “I would always advise choosing most recent.”
   Show. “You have the choice of showing all of the blogs you have listed, 5, 10 or 25,” Hilary writes.  “It will show the most recently updated.”
   Icon. Hilary says that she would usually un-check this option.  Typically, it just shows a blogger ‘b’ or other blog platform icon.  “Not very interesting unless you are following other feeds when it is more relevant,” she writes.
   Title. This shows the title of the most recent post.
   Snippet. This shows a little text from the first lines of the blog post.
   Thumbnail. This shows an image if available – it’s always the first image used in the post.
   Date of Last Update.  “This tells you how many hours or days ago it was posted,” Hilary says.
5. Now, click on “Add a Blog to you List”.  From here, add by URL by simply copying and pasting a url or web address (e.g. Hilary’s blog: http://haptreeandme.blogspot.com).  You can also paste the address of a feed, (such as http://api.flickr.com/services/feeds/groups_pool.gne?id=1313315@N20&lang=en-us&format=rss_200).  After entering the URL, click “Add”.
6. Update “Blogs I’m Following”, which is a list of all of the blogs you are following.  “You can then check a box against each to choose whether or not to have it on your list,” Hilary explains.
7. Import from Google Reader.  “As above you can edit which blogs appear via check boxes if you use Google Reader,” Hilary says. “This is also good for having a blog list of ‘feeds’ you are already following and is quicker than copying and pasting. Also you can manage groups of feeds into files in google reader and then easily select an entire file.”
8. Now click “Save” and drag to the desired location within your dashboard. “The choices you make above should be guided by the space you have and also how many blogs/feeds you intend to have showing,” she writes.

Thank you for the tutorial Hilary!

Be sure to read another article on HandmadeMarketing.org by Hilary called “Web Feeds – Use Blog Rolls for Other Websites”.