Cornucopia

Bloggernacle Notes

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We’re trying out a new feature, which (assuming Kaimi doesn’t break it again) could be quite useful: Bloggernacle notes. It’s on the sidebar, right here. The idea is that we’ll drop quick links to other blogs into the Bloggernacle Notes section (since it seems like those posts don’t usually generate much comment anyway) and free up more space for substantive posts.

17 comments for “Bloggernacle Notes”

  2. By the way, if you used Matt Mullenweg’s Asides hack, you could have one-liner posts that would accomplish something similar (and it would allow for comments).

  3. I thought about using the asides hack, but I wanted the links in the sidebar. Perhaps there’s a way to do that with Asides — I’m not sure.

  4. How long would you want links in the sidebar to remain? It appears that somehow it just keeps the top four or five links that you have there? Either way is fine. I just think you might want to give a good Bloggernacle Post a (termporarily) more prominent link inbetween the more substantial posts. The trick I suppose would be to see how it looks in your template. It does take some getting used to but I like mine (though I probably abuse it somewhat).

    Also, the Asides hack relies on the WordPress category feature. As far as I can tell that’s not a feature you are using for T&S (unless that’s what the Regular Features area signifies, hmmm). So maybe that’s another strike against the hack.

  5. Kaimi, just so you know, I emailed you some code you could use for a “Comments Leaders” feature if you want to re-institute that into your sidebar as well.

  6. Well, I’ve only got four links right now on the list. I set it to keep the top 12.

    But I would be interested in getting comment functionality there. Also authorship — I tried to make that happen by trying to modify the plug-in, but I only succeeded in breaking it and having to re-upload it.

    I.e., my ideal would be a sidebar plug-in that shows the last 10 or 12, but also allows authorship and comments, looking something like this:

    [sidebar]

    -Logan Bobo has another interesting post over at SOM [LINK] (by Kaimi) Comments (2)
    -Danithew has another crazy post over at Wump — is he on drugs or what? [LINK]. (by Kaimi) Comments (5)
    -Clark Goble discusses the epistemology of high council talks [LINK] (by Nate) Comments (1)
    -BCC is talking about SSM again, are they one-note or what? [LINK] (by Kristine) Comments (12)

    etc.

    Do you know if that’s possible with Asides? (Or with some sort of mod to Asides?)

  7. I’ve never seen someone use Asides in the sidebar but it’s got to be possible. As far as I can tell, if you know enough about how to manipulate code or create code, you should be able to do just about anything you could imagine in WordPress.

    The Asides hack is currently designed to place it’s material along with the other posts. So it would definitely have to be altered to do what you want it to do. I think though, that if you activated Asides and used it awhile, T&S would become addicted to using it regularly (along with the regular posts). It comes in handy all the time for bits of information that are interesting but don’t merit their own large headline. If you had it going, you wouldn’t need that sidebar feature at all.

  8. If you want to see a site that I think uses the Asides feature pretty nicely (probably better than I do) check out Mark Ghosh’s “Mindful Musings” blog. Just scroll down after you follow this link:

    http://mindfulmusings.net/weblog/

    I think that would work very well for quickly and briefly drawing attention to individual posts by Bloggernackers.

  9. LOL! Kaimi I just read your fake headlines and the answer to your question is that it’s a darn good thing I’m not on drugs as I’m already goofy enough as it is.

  10. If I didn’t know that this blog doesn’t keep post counts, I’d accuse you of gratuitous posting danithew. :)

  11. Great new feature, Kaimi. The best part about it is that, like the comments and the posts, it is also an RSS Feed so I can get it in my aggregator. Thanks.

  12. Hey Kaimi,

    Nice job on the sidebar feature. Is that a hack/plugin you downloaded or something you cobbled together? I’m guessing that feature would be of interest to some others.

  13. Danithew,

    I’m laughing, because my solution is a total stopgap.

    I previously got it to post author ID’s, so they said “by 4” or “by 5.”

    My MySQL skills are not all that great, and I repeatedly tried to figure out mysql_query (SELECT) language or mysql_fetch_row to set up an array of author ID’s with nicknames. I failed.

    But remember, I had gotten it to show author ID’s.

    I posted the question on the WP support forums, but no one offered any ideas.

    So, I dropped in a few lines of code, straight into the plug-in, to transform link_author into a usable name. (Yes, blatantly obvious ideas take a while for us lawyers to figure out).

    Just before outputting (and with the link_author set, though it’s a number) I inserted these lines:

    if (($link->link_author) == 5)
    {
    $nickname = ‘Kaimi Wenger’;
    }
    if (($link->link_author) == 4)
    {
    $nickname = ‘Matt Evans’;
    }

    How’s that for ugly? I’m going to have to add in the author ID numbers for anyone else who puts up a link, too. It’s a lot more unweidly than matching up the ID to the nickname in the database, but like I said about my SQL skills . . .

  15. It’s always fun (translation: embarrassing) when you end up having to answer your own questions over at WordPress Support. Still, that site definitely does come in handy. I promise you know more about MySQL than I do. I refuse to touch the stuff. :)

  16. Just a suggestion for appearance – if you could tighten up the list of comments and blogs in terms of line spacing and then put a bit of a gap between entries in the bloggernacle notes section that would render it easier to read. (He says as he writes a horrible example of a runon sentence)

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