Installation & Usage
1. How to get started.
2. How to create a blogroll.
3. How to add links to your blogroll.
4. How to install on your website.
5. How to set your display preferences.
6. How to use the RSS and OPML datasources.
7. How to use the raw datasource with PHP.
8. RSS layout.
9. OPML layout.
First you have to signup for an account. It's fast and free and easy. If you don't already have an account click here to signup. You will be sent an email with an activation URL. You must visit the URL in the email to activate the account then you can login from the homepage. The rest of this tutorial assumes you're an active member and logged in to your account.
Once you login you will be presented with the main members homepage. On the left are the main navigational items and on the right are the listings of all your blogrolls with their individual options. To get started you're going to want to create a blogroll. Click on the "Create a Blogroll" link in the lefthand menu. You will be presented with a simple form with 2 options. One is the name of your BlogRoll and the other is the URL of your weblog. You must fill out both before you can continue. Once you fill out the form press the submit button and you're done. You just created a BlogRoll. Move onto the next step and add your links.
3. How to add links to your blogroll.
There are 2 methods to adding links to your BlogRoll. The first is to add them individually from the main website. From the main members page choose the "add links" option from the options. You will be presented with a simple form to fill out. The second method is to install the one click link addition bookmarklet. You can add links to your blogroll without ever coming back to the site. Just drag the link below to your links bar in IE and Netscape and when you're at a site you want to add to a blogroll just click the link. A pop-up window will present the pre-filled out link options for the site you're browsing. If you have multiple blogrolls just select the appropriate blogroll from the pulldown menu.
BlogRoll It! <-- drag this link to your browser's link bar
4. How to install on your website.
When your BlogRoll is ready for primetime you're going to want to show it off on your website. You are going to need to do 3 simple steps to install BlogRolling.
Step 1: Get your unique code.
From the main members page click on the "get code" link for the BlogRoll you want to add. You will be presented with a page of several options to choose from. The easiest and most popular way to add BlogRolling to a website is via JavaScript. More options are covered later in this documentation. So you are going to want to select and copy the code from the JavaScript portion to your clipboard and move onto step 2.Step 2: Paste the code into your blog template.
This step is different for all blog systems or content management systems. Please consult the documentation on modifying your blog templates for the individual systems. All you need to do is open up the template for your blog and paste in the code from step one to the spot you want it to be displayed on your blog. If you've ever modified the appearance of your blog this should be very simple.Step 3: Republish your blog.
The last step is to re-publish, re-build or re-upstream your blog. This sends the new templates to the webserver and shows your finely crafted BlogRoll to the world. Simple enough eh?5. Setting your BlogRoll preferences.
There are numerous options for customizing the look and feel of your BlogRoll including pre-pending and appending text to the links, flagging and customizing links that have been recently updated, ordering the links by different criteria and more. The documentation for the individual options can be found on the preferences page itself. To modify the preferences for an individual BlogRoll please go to the members homepage and select "Preferences" from the list of options.
6. Using BlogRolling's OPML option with Radio.
Jake Savin has written an excellent tutorial on "How to create a BlogRoll with Radio's outliner". If you use Radio and want to get the most out of using the features please consult his documentation. Note: When using the OPML datasource with Radio the blogroll list on the website is only updated when you publish an entry. This affects the way that the recently updated links work. They will be presented as recent from the moment you publish. If you want the list to be "LIVE" then you should use another publishing method. To add a blogroll using OPML to Radio please follow these basic steps.
Step 1: Update Radio.root.
Make sure your Radio install is up to date and has the latest macros by Clicking Here.Step 2: Get your unique code.
From the main members page click on the "get code" link for the BlogRoll you want to add. You will be presented with a page of several options to choose from. Scroll down to the OPML option and copy that link to your clipboard.Step 3: Prepare your macro and update your template
This is the most basic approach to install the BlogRoll. For more options please see Jakes Tutorial. Now you are going to want to copy and paste the following line into your #homeTemplate.txt file. Please consult the Radio documentation on how to do this if you are unsure.<%radio.macros.blogroll ("URL")%>
Next replace URL with the URL from step 2 and save the file. The next time you post to your weblog the new page will be upstreamed to the Radio server and your blogroll will be included. That's all there is to it.
7. Using BlogRolling's PHP option on your PHP enabled weblog.
If your blog supports PHP and allow_url_fopen you can call the data from BlogRolling directly bypassing JavaScript. This has the distinct advantages that it loads text into your page before display so it can be read by search engines and other robots that can't read the JavaScript code. To use this you must know your way around PHP. I won't answer any support questions on how to set-up your blog to use PHP or similar tech support requests. That's what you pay your ISP for.
Click here for the PHP code. Copy the code and change the value of the variable $url to the value you get from the code generator for your particular BlogRoll. You can then paste this directly into your PHP enabled blog or save it as a file that you include. Whatever suits you.
This is how BlogRolling uses the RSS format to describe the blogs in your blogroll.
<item>
<title>Blog Title</title>
<link>Blog URL</link>
<description>Last Updated Timestamp, Title, or URL</description>
</item>
Please note that the RSS Option does not send any extra information such as the link prepend/append information or the recently updated prepend/append information. It's up to you to incorporate this into your RSS Processor. If you have any specific implementation requests send them to me and if they will benefit the community I'll see about implementing them.
This is how BlogRolling uses and extends the OPML format to describe the links in your BlogRoll.
<outline
text="Blog Title"
type="link"
url="Blog URL"
title="Last Updated Timestamp, Title, or URL"
target="Link Target"
isRecent="true" (Optional: included only if blog is recently updated)
/>
Please note that the OPML option does not send any extra information such as the link prepend/append information or the recently updated prepend/append information.