Monthly Archives: November 2007

Using SimplePie For Your Sideblog

I’ve previously talked about sideblogs, or asides as they’re often called. The most common way to setup a sideblog in WordPress generally involves creating a second Loop to display posts from a certain category (a plugin is often used to do this). There’s a downside to that approach though.

If you use the Loop/Category approach, you end up with tons of short, two-sentence posts. That means each of your 347 sideblog entries has it’s own permalink page where 97% of the page is just the single.php template. Google doesn’t really like pages with little “original content,” so you could potentially have a problem on your hands. Even if you’re not that worried about what Google thinks of your blog, you still have 347 permalink pages, which could get in the way.

Here’s my solution:

  1. Create a new Tumbleblog using Tumblr.com.
  2. Use the SimplePie WordPress Plugin to easily put the Tumbleblog feed’s contents in your blog sidebar.

Simple (pun unintended). Now you can post your sideblog entries to Tumblr, and they will appear on your blog.

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And the Winner is…

Imar Krige of Blogsolid.com has won the podcast naming contest. The name picked, however, was not Imar’s suggested “Webmaster-Cast” (though I also liked that name). Imar was chosen at random after I chose the name “BlogCast” for the upcoming podcast. Imar was chosen at…

Is something up in FeedBurnerVille?

My subscriber count went down from 82 to 37. Is this a glitch…or what? Darren Rowse has had a similar problem. Feedburner Subscriber Counters – A Glitch?

Podcast Contest Ends Today

The contest to name our new podcast ends today (midnight EST). If you have an idea for a name, get it in!

BlogBuzz November 3, 2007

Welcome to Webmaster-Source Version 3.0!

Welcome to the third iteration of Webmaster-Source! Here’s what’s been going on lately… The design has been updated. There have been a few stylistic changes, and more room for peripheral content has been made by adding a second sidebar to the main page. Peripheral…

Vote For WSC!

Webmaster-Source is currently second in the Blogger’s Choice Awards for “Best Blog about Blogging.” Go and vote!

Asides Added

I figured I needed a place to post things that are too short for a regular post. E.g. links, ideas, miscellaneous design thoughts, WSC updates.

How Should You Implement Asides?

Asides. Sideblogs. Microblogging. Whatever you want to call it, there are many ways to implement the idea. There are different methods of displaying the asides, and there are different methods code-wise of setting them up. Let’s take a look at both. Styling Asides “Asides”…

Halloween Logos

Even though Smashing Magazine beat me to it, I’m still going to go ahead with my original plan and show a few logo redesigns that I saw yesterday. I especially like YouTube’s logo change. It’s down the list a little, but I think it’s…