The Egotistical Priest
An irreverent and opinionated discussion of the many classes
in the World of Warcraft gaming universe.
Blogroll
by Vonya
I’ve had it.
I’m fed up, and I’m not taking it anymore.
No, I’m not going on an axe-murdering spree (priests can’t equip axes, let’s not be silly)…instead, I spent some time and put all the blogs I regularly read into the Google Reader.
I now have a far more accurate way of keeping track of my favorite blogs, rather than just visiting and hoping something’s changed.
I ALSO have a nice way of keeping an eye on possible blogroll additions - World of Matticus (as an example) has been in my eye for a long time, but I’ve not been able to watch accurately because I’m a scatterbrain. Pretty sure they’re overdue a link, but now I can know for sure.
THIS makes me a happy panda.
So if you have a blog for me to evaluate and possibly add to my blogroll in a month or day or so (depending on my mood) then feel free to offer a link. Remember my rules though - you can’t get angry if I don’t add you.
…okay, you can get angry, but I’m not obligated to feel bad about it.
ALSO, and far more importantly, I have a question.
Sometimes I’ll ask a question or respond to a thread in the comments.
Is there any way for me to watch the COMMENTS on a blog?
BRK, for example, I’ve twice put up questions and I have to manually remember to go back and check for updates. (Once about freeze trap panicking, and once about simultaneously leveling two pets).
I also add comments here and there if I’m feeling frisky. If the owner of the blog responds, I wanna know, so I can respond back if necessary.
Some of you guys seem to psychically know when I comment — how do you do that? Is there a cat5 cable I can just plug behind my left ear, and if so, how much does the port surgery cost?
But yes. Google Reader for the WIN.
Now if only I could add my friends page on my livejournal and my messages from deviantart, I’d never have to leave my safe, comfortable circle of three sites.
And before you ask, yes, I added icanhascheezburger and cuteoverload to my list. No list complete without it!
Also before you ask, no, I won’t tell you who I am on LJ and DA. Not because it’s a secret, but because I like to watch you squirm. DANCE, monkey, DANCE!
/use Piccolo of the Flaming Fire
September 14th, 2007
re knowing when a comment is made - it’s set by the feeder (the bloghost program). By default, free blogsites blogger.com and wordpress.com do full feed if the user has an open-access (ie, no invites needed) page. Users can reduce that, however.
oh - want a neat hint if your site does full feed (comments)? Put your site in your feedreader with a high enough priority new comments are on the first page…
September 14th, 2007
Hmmm, I’ll have to do some watching…maybe some people just haven’t commented on my favorite blogs yet? Highly unlikely, but possible.
Does anyone else use a blog reader? Is there anything I could do to make this site more reader-friendly?
September 14th, 2007
Ego, there’s a link at the bottom of your pages (and of most, if not all, WordPress pages) for Entries (RSS) and Comments (RSS). Because your blog is one of the most commented I read (and is a WP blog), I subscribe to both the Entries Feed and the Comments Feed.
I haven’t been able to figure out how to add Blogger/Blogspot comment feeds to Google Reader yet, but since Kirk says it can be done, I’m going to look again–BRK’s blog comments are another I’d subscribe to.
I use Google Reader myself, and I have dragged the “Subscribe” button to my Firefox Bookmarks Toolbar Folder, so it is always available. If I find a blog I like and want to subscribe to, I simply hit the Subscribe button–voila!
September 14th, 2007
BTW, I hate hate HATE the Piccolo of the Flaming Fire!
September 14th, 2007
Aw, i love that trinket. It has such a reasonable cooldown and keeps going until you stop it, unlike that damn Orb of Deception, piece of poo that it is.
September 14th, 2007
Kestrel covered WP very well. Here’s an article that talks about Blogger Comments feeds:
http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/4565
On Resto4Life, for example, the link to comments feeds appears at the bottom of an individual article’s comments.
September 14th, 2007
Okay, I figured out how to subscribe to, for example, BRK’s comments (well, other peoples’ comments on his blogs):
o At the bottom of his main page, there’s a link to “Subscribe to Posts (Atom)”. Click it.
o That will open up Google Reader’s subscription dialog page, where you can add the feed to your Gmail main page or Google Reader. Don’t click anything yet!
o Up in your browser’s address bar will be something that looks like this:
http://www.google.com/ig/add?feedurl=http%3A%2F%2Fbigredkitty.blogspot.com%2Ffeeds%2Fposts%2Fdefault
Where you see “Feeds”, replace that with “Comments”. Hit Enter.
o You now can add the Comments feed to your Google Reader. Voilá!
September 14th, 2007
CORRECTION
Replace “posts” with “comments”–not Feeds.
Above is the process. However, to save time, if you want to subscribe to BRK’s comments feed, click this link:
http://www.google.com/ig/add?feedurl=http%3A%2F%2Fbigredkitty.blogspot.com%2Ffeeds%2Fcomments%2Fdefault
September 14th, 2007
As has already been said, Word Press has a blog-wide comment feed, which is nice. Too bad blogger/blogspot doesn’t seem to have that, as it’s the most commonly used. I
September 14th, 2007
Ooh, Kestrel broke the secret code for blogger comment feeds. Good work!
Also, I haven’t tried Google Reader. I use bloglines (http://www.bloglines.com). They also have a beta that is much more Web 2.0-y at http://beta.bloglines.com. I find it serves my feed reading needs quite nicely.
And it would be nice to be able to have a feed for your livejournal friends page. I can add individual lj feeds to bloglines, but any friends-only posts won’t show up there and if you have a lot of lj friends (I don’t) that can mean a lot of individual feeds to add anyway. Anything requiring authentication is currently a weak spot for RSS.
(I thought I posted this comment already, but it didn’t show up. . . they aren’t moderated, are they? I apologize if I end up with a double post. But I did change the content a bit, so it wouldn’t be exactly a double!)
September 14th, 2007
Thanks for the nod, Ego. I was wondering why my traffic spiked up recently to over 300 hits.
September 14th, 2007
Piccolo > All
And the BRK comments tempt me sorely…I think I’ll have to subscribe. Thank you very much!!
September 14th, 2007
I use Bloglines, is Google Reader better?
September 14th, 2007
@Malva
I dunno…I only just started Google Reader today, and never used anything before it. Perhaps a reader will know…
September 14th, 2007
@Malva: In my case, bloglines is blocked while I’m at work, but I can get Google Reader feeds just fine. (I just found this out because I thought I’d give Bloglines a try, in the interest of Good Science.)
*sigh* Some of the stuff blocked here at work just makes no sense.
September 14th, 2007
@Josh
Sorry your comments got caught in my spam filter. It catches about 20 porno ads a day, so it’s not something I’m willing to lose, even if it does mean I have to go through and manually unfilter the good comments that get caught up.
Makes me wish I knew what the formula was, you and Lauchis both get trapped!
September 14th, 2007
I was having a horrible problem with Spam on my blog until I installed a “enter the word from this picture” plug in.
I used “Peter’s Custom Anti-Spam” from http://www.theblog.ca/?p=21.
Not only did it stop the spam.. but it allowed me to specify the words.
Nibuca
http://warcraft.fibergeek.com/
September 15th, 2007
BTW, Ego, are you using the Akismet plugin, by chance? It seems to do a great job of filtering stuff, but so far, I haven’t been hit by spam to know for sure.
One of the things it does is force moderation of the first comment from someone. Once you’ve approved a person, though, the rest of their comments post right away.
I do know one thing: Your current filter is effective, but it seems comments take about 10 seconds to get through it.
September 15th, 2007
Ego. OK, now you’ve got the rss stuff mastered. But you asked a question I carefully left UNanswered to avoid confusion. Tricky ‘knowing you’ve got things to read’ techniques vary. My favorite:
I use Firefox as my webrowser. I use extensions. Specifically applicable, I use Google Reader Watcher. While you can load it from the Firefox Extensions and Addons pages (and frankly I always try to do that), you can read about it more fully at the creator’s page: http://ajnasz.hu/google-reader-watcher .
Quite simple. If a new post or comment comes to my reader, then within 5 minutes the icon at the bottom of my screen flags me. Open google reader, take a quick look, and proceed from there. Yes, I can set the time to check faster. shrug - why?
September 15th, 2007
‘ello Ego, I’ve been reading your blog for a bit even though I’m not a priest (I’m the kind of person who reads everything about every class they can, and I can’t read that much) and I was wondering if you could take a look at my freshly started blog, inspired by you, BRK, and Big Bear Butt.
Any advice on blogging, or technical answers to my questions in post #1 would be greatly apreciated
http://www.peashootersrant.blogspot.com
-P
September 15th, 2007
I can’t believe you’ve lived this long without a feed reader. Might I suggest you look at Bloglines.com as an alternative to Google Reader? Google Reader is a great way to get introduced to feed readers, but something like Bloglines feels more appropriate if you read a lot of blogs. (for one it separates feeds into source, so you can see how many new posts there are on a single blog)
Yes, as many people have said, many blogs have separate feeds for content and comments.
September 16th, 2007
http://www.netvibes.com/ is worth a look too. Similar type of thing, but I find it easier to get a good overview and organisation of my feeds with that.
September 16th, 2007
Did I put my comment/request in the wrong place?
-P
September 17th, 2007
@Peashooter
Nope, you’re on my watchlist. Request assimilated.
September 17th, 2007
Ooh, thanks, actually, I’m just starting so I have very little doubt that I won’t make it, I just wanted suggestions on how to improve, thanks again
-P