Forget MyBlogLog, Here’s a Better Idea
August 4th, 2008 by MattI’m not the only one who thinks MyBlogLog is a waste of valuable template space. It clutters an otherwise (hopefully) clean design, makes pages take longer to load, and doesn’t really provide much value to the reader. Do you pay any attention to MyBlogLog widgets when you visit a blog, or do you ignore them like I do?
Now, MyBlogLog is an interesting concept, but it has some issues, and I’m sure a lot of you avoid it for the same reasons I do.
Recently, I came up with something a bit more interesting…
Okay, obviously you like to recieve comments on your blog postings, and it’s nice to offer a small reward to people who frequently contribute to the discussions. Thus, many of us have “Top Commentators” sections on our blogs, which generally show frequent commenters’ names and link to their websites.
After reading Blog Herald’s post on MyBlogLog (see above link), I thought “Why not have a recent/top commentators section on a blog that displays Gravatars linked to the commentators’ uls instead of just names?” (From my Twitter.)
Obviously this is a plugin waiting to happen, but I’m too lazy to throw one together yet. 
If anyone wants to take my idea and build something, feel free to do so. (If you do build a plugin, I’d like an email so I can try it out myself…)
And here’s the plugin: Gravatar Top Commenters.
From your idea to the plugin, only a few hours
So, I made a plugin I will release on Wordpress soon, but I wanted to inform you that I created such a widget for Wordpress.Any idea on what it should do ?
Here is a list of options :
Display last commenters or top commenters
Display commenter name or not
Default gravatar
Gravatar size
Display link to commenters blog or not
Add no follow to the link or not
The plugin will be published today or tommorow on my personnal blog
Nice idea Matt.@ Anthony…thanx for the widget.
Is it available for download?
@Webmaster’s Forum, it’s available here: Zen-Dreams.com.
Nice post. Liking this blog going to have to bookmark it.
I just wanted to drop you a line and let you know that I really loved this post. It was full of great information and creativity, both of which we always need.
I’m having a little bit of trouble viewing your site in Opera, but it may just be my computer. Apart from that, I love your site. I plan on surfing around and checking out some more posts!