August 26, 2007

Random Rotating Blogroll: Now It's "Fun-Sized!"

You know how those microscopic candy bars are called "fun sized," even though there's nothing "fun" about getting one measly bite all wrapped up masquerading as a real candy bar? Or how cheap restaurants or hotels with few extras are called "Express" even though they're not particularly fast? Well, in that stellar American Marketing Tradition, Crabby is proud to present her new, "Fun-Sized" "Express" Random Rotating Blogroll!

Could we have a Blogroll Drumroll please...

Ta da!

It's over on the right side bar somewhere. It may be hard to find because there are only 10 blogs on it. But if you refresh, the selection changes. Doesn't it? Please?

At least that's what Crabby hopes. It took her for-freakin'-ever to put it together, despite the Perfectly Clear Instructions. (Apparently missing commas and stray apostrophe's can kill the whole list, and Crabby is terrible about spotting things like that.)

Crabby has been looking for something like this, because she herself finds that when she goes to blogs with huge Blogrolls, she rarely ever clicks on anything. With a small list, the idea of checking something out becomes far more intriguing. On the other hand, one hates to be overly fussy about adding new friends in order to keep a blogroll small and tempting. So where to find a solution?

It seems as though there are many more Widgets around for Wordpress than for Blogger, and most Blogroll widgets wanted Crabby to bring in Content from Other Blogs and involved RSS feeds. Crabby wanted something simpler. So she finally Consulted the Google and found JuliaKM, who has come up with a Fine Solution!

The only problem was that the coding worked just fine when Crabby copied it exactly, but then she had a blogroll full of Chess Blogs. It took so many tries to get her own blogs in there before it worked that Crabby was about to give up and start writing about Chess instead of Health! So please don't tell her its not working or you all are going to be reading soon about Chess, which won't be much fun at all because Crabby can't remember the first thing about how to play it.

Anyway, Crabby in the process of adding some new people to the blogroll and dropping some former blog friendlies that she hasn't seen around in a while. But it may be a while forever before she gets completely up to date.

In the meantime, if you've been visiting regularly and commenting frequently and don't see your blog ever, ever, come up, give Crabby a holler in the comments or email her. She is (a) lazy (b) careless and (c) not necessarily trying to be all-inclusive. Some general guidelines: health-related blogs, incredibly amusing blogs, and frequent commenters are more likely to be given priority. Also, if you want to be on Crabby's blogroll it's a good idea to put her on yours, too. But like most bloggers, she's somewhat arbitrary about this as well as being forgetful.

Hope everyone is having a good weekend!

19 comments:

  1. Neato!

    I did something similar on my blog a while ago: I replaced my blogroll with a Technorati favorites widget that shows the last three posts made by people in my favorites. (Although I wish it were possible to make it show five or so instead of three.) Now I don't have to worry about a) the blogroll ever getting huge or b) appearing to snub or favor anyone based on their position in the blogroll!

    I think it also makes it clearer that people in my favorites are just people I like to read and may or may not be aware of my existence, much less a personal friend or anything. :p

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  2. Hi Chicken Girl,
    That's a very cool idea too! Don't know why I didn't come across that one, but now that I've converted most of my blogroll list I'm gonna stick to this solution for a while. But that sounds like a really good way to handle it.

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  3. I am disappointed not to be learning more about Chess from your blog :(

    However, I must confess I'm learning an awful lot about blog technology here. Rotating blog rolls, which site meters to avoid, all kinds of stuff I should know about.

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  4. Crabby,

    All this tech stuff is beyond me, still, I'm glad you are up on it so if I need it, I'll know right where to come for info.

    I missed out on the Friday blog. (Friday's here at Cranky Fitness are usually my favorite!)

    So, for the record I intend to have sex daily right up until the day before I die. I say everyone should. That will sure change the statistics.

    And what about death day, you ask. Well, I think it's tacky to have sex on death day. Think I'll get my hair and nails done instead.

    Terrie

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  5. Well, I think your random, rotating, fun-sized, express blogroll is a great idea. : ] It's great for when I'm bored and looking for something fun to read. And I've always wondered that about fun-sized candies, too. I always thought the king-sized ones were more fun...

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  6. I'm honored to be added to the blog roll...I feel a little misty eyed. I may have to checkout this functionality as well.. in theory since I help develop websites I should be able to make it work. Oh who am I kidding, I'm the project manager not the coder!

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  7. Crabby,

    I can always count on you for "up to the minute" technology!

    A rotating blogroll...

    Stellar!

    Hope you've had a great weekend1

    truly,

    Sylvia C.

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  8. Very cool! And thanks for including mine. You did well despite your initial crustacean frustration. :)

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  9. Mary,
    Glad you're learning something--but perhaps some day I should post something related to health and fitness!

    Terrie,
    Too funny. Don't know about sex or haircuts, but I hope the day I die I have a cheeseburger, big fat hot fudge sundae, and quite a few cupcakes!

    Thanks Dana--And I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks Big Candybars are way more fun!

    Amanda,
    Just beware of any blogs that have apostrophe's in them. I missed that little warning at the top of the instructions and it was one of the reasons my list kept not publishing. You have to precede them with a backslash. Or whatever this is called: \

    Thanks Sylvia! Actually, I'm pretty clueless on technology but just got lucky finding this one. You have a great weekend too!

    Hilary,
    Crustacean Frustration! I love it. Perhaps that should have been the name of the blog.

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  10. Crabby: yes, that's the backslash. :) The backslash is commonly used as an "escape character" in programming -- it tells the computer to treat the character following the backslash differently than usual. Because your rotating blogroll code has you enclosing each entry with single quotes/apostrophes, you need to escape apostrophes within entries so that the computer will know that they are just apostrophe-apostrophes and not entry-ending-apostrophes or else it will get messed up. The problem that you're trying to avoid is known in programming as a "delimiter collision".

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  11. hey there, i would LOVE to be be part of the revolving blogroll (worked for me!)... might have to do this on mine too since i have two, very long lists - oy vey! :o)

    just another weigh
    http://justanotherweigh.blogspot.com

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  12. Fun-sized blogroll. Good for you.
    All this techno stuff is beyond me and I'm quite lost when it's explained. But it works and that's what matters.

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  13. way 2 go crabby... i've done that with some of my sooper long blogrolls too... Glad you're "crankmeter" survived.:)

    great weekend with houseful of guests at the inn (clear from england too!) and much equine encounters with "full and upright" position maintained. hooraa

    while just a "newbie" here. would love to be part of your blogroll ..

    happy trails
    gp in montana

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  14. Chicken Girl,
    What a great, easy to understand explanation! Plus if it's not already the name of a band, I thing Delimiter Collision certainly should be.

    Hi Jodi!
    Yep (but, um, can I ask the same favor?)

    Leah,
    I wish I was the techno sort, but my main skill is typing searches into the little google box and letting other people figure out how to do what I need to get done!

    Hi GP!
    Actually, your innkeeping blog does look quite interesting and entertaining--more health related than I would have thought, what with the whole grain pancakes and all. So I'll add provisionally. People tend to sort of come and go here, so I may do more adding and trimming as I go along.

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  15. thanx crabby..

    happy trails
    gp in montana

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  16. Isn't it fun?

    The one thing I want to add is a link for people who want to go to a page that has my entire blogroll. Unfortunately, that's not something blogger can provide so you'd have to do it on a self-hosted page.

    PS Chess blogs rule!

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  17. Hi Blue Devil Knight!

    Actually, as you probably figured out, it was your blogroll I was playing with when I kept typing mine in wrong. I was beginning to think I'd just have to become a chess blog too.

    And yeah, I sure wish blogger would allow for static pages. It's so annoying that they don't!

    Thanks for stopping by!

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  18. Thanks for the great explanation of delimiters Chicken Girl! I just added a link to your explanation from the blog post.

    Crabby McSlacker, let me know if you run into any other problems. Sorry my explanation of how to install the script was so lacking. It never occurred to me that someone other than Eric would use it.

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  19. JuliaKM,
    Your explanation was totally clear and your script was most helpful! Darn, I hope I explained that well enough in the post.

    The thing that kept messing me up was my total inability to spot my own typos. I really didn't see the apostrophes I was leaving in, and kept I kept forgetting commas or putting them in all the wrong places. So then the list would fail.

    This was an awesome solution to a problem so many bloggers must have, and I felt really lucky that you solved it for me! I just wish I weren't such a spazz and could have gotten it working without screwing it up so many times.

    Thanks again!

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