The Alliance

Friday Linky Stuff

Carnival of Comedy #70 is up at Steve the Pirate.

CoC still needs hosts for next week & the weeks after. Contact spacemonkey-at-imao.us

Carnival of Republican Freedom #20 will be at YoungRepublicans4NY. Send your best post related to either Republicans or freedom to yr4nyblog-at-aol.com by noon Sunday. See here for submission guidelines.

The Best of Me Symphony #144 will be at The Owner's Manual. Submit your best post from your archives that's more than 60 days old. Entry deadline is midnight Sunday. E-mail to gcruse-at-netscape.com with subject line "Best of Me Symphony". See here for guidelines.

Watermark will be hosting the next Carnival of the Cats (#127). Submit your post containing a picture of a cat or a Reasonable Facsimilie of a Cat (RFOAC) by 5pm Sunday to submissions-at-carnivalofthecats.com See the Carnival of the Cats home page for details.

Carnival of the Vanities #207 will be at TamsPalm Submit a link to your best post by 5pm Tuesday to cotvmail-at-gmail.com. Or you can just do the easy thing and use Conservative Cat's All-Purpose Submission Page (see below).

Conservative Cat's All-Purpose Carnival Submission Page - Bookmark this handy form, and you can enter almost any carnival with just a few clicks. It doesn't get much more convenient than this, folks. Additionally, it now features a "Carnival News" section, featuring links to the most recent Carnival posts. Also please note that Ferdy tracks a LOT more Carnivals than just the ones listed at Alliance HQ.

The Blog Carnival Index currently tracks 477 blog carnivals and offers a submission form. If you can't find a carnival at Conservative Cat, look here (and vice versa).

Conservative Cat's Permanent Floating Ping Festival. Just send a ping to http://www.conservativecat.com/Ferdy/.track.cgi/3, and you will show up on the front page. The only rule is you need to have a link to Conservative Cat somewhere on your front page, but most Alliance members should already have that. Just keep it clean and no more than one per day. The 15 most recent pings are displayed in the right sidebar with an excerpt.

Basil of Basil's Blog wants to send you traffic! If you trackback to a post in his "Articles of Interest" category, the trackback from your post will appear at the bottom of his post. All he asks is that you give a courtesy link back to the post you're trackbacking. See the link for details.

The New Blog Carnival Showcase - a chance for new bloggers (3 months old or newer) to get some free exposure. It's a great way to get your beginner's talent discovered. See this post for details. For blogs that are too old, you should consider checking out the entries, since grateful new bloggers tend to reciprocate post links with permalinks.

Final Linky Stuff

Due to recent events in my personal life, I regretfully announce that I will no longer be able to keep the Alliance HQ blog updated. The Blog War is over. There will be no more assignments.

This is not necessarily a bad thing.

Although the Alliance will no longer be able to provide links and traffic as it once did, there remain numerous permanent opportunities at other sites, and I encourage you to take advantage of them:

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Conservative Cat's All-Purpose Carnival Submission Page

The Blog Carnival Index

Conservative Cat's Permanent Floating Ping Festival. Send a ping to http://www.conservativecat.com/Ferdy/.track.cgi/3, and you will show up on the front page. The only rule is you need to have a link to Conservative Cat somewhere on your front page, but most Alliance members should already have that. Just keep it clean and no more than one per day. The 15 most recent pings are displayed in the right sidebar with an excerpt.

Basil of Basil's Blog:
If you trackback to a post in his "Articles of Interest" category, the trackback from your post will appear at the bottom of his post. All he asks is that you give a courtesy link back to the post you're trackbacking. See the link for details.

James of Outside the Beltway hosts a more-or-less daily linkfest called the Beltway Traffic Jam. Go to the most recent Traffic Jam post in the Traffic Jam category, and send a trackback to get entered in the next edition. If you're ping-impaired, you can use the standalone trackback form, a link to which is conveniently located at the bottom of the Traffic Jam post.

The New Blog Carnival Showcase - a chance for new bloggers (3 months old or newer) to get some free exposure. It's a great way to get your beginner's talent discovered. See this post for details. For blogs that are too old, you should consider checking out the entries, since grateful new bloggers tend to reciprocate post links with permalinks.

Carnival of the Cats home page.

Carnival of the Vanities home page.

Carnival of the Capitalists home page.

Future hosts for the Christian Carnival can be found in the right sidebar of Wittenberg Gate.

Information on the Best of Me Symphony can be found in the right sidebar of The Owner's Manual

Carnival of the Recipes tracking page at Blog Carnival.

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At some point in the future, the Alliance Archives will likely be transferred to a free hosting site so that Charming Alliance HQ Hostess Susie of Practical Penumbra will no longer have to pay for hosting out of her own pocket, as she's done over the last 3 years. If you'd like to thank her for her dedicated and uncomplaining service, the tip jar is in the right sidebar. Please consider dropping a couple bucks in to buy her a virtual beer. I think she's earned it.

Special thanks to:

Frank J. of IMAO for starting the Blog War in the first place.

GEBIV of There's One, Only! for his regular participation in assignments and his long stint as assignment wrangler.

Basil of Basil's Blog and Phin of The Phish Bowl for offering technical support, assistance, and blogging tips.

I had a lot of fun doing this, and I will miss it. I wish you all continued success in your blogging endeavors.

Sincerely,

Harvey

Goodbye to the Alliance?

I was caught a little off-guard by Harvey's post announcing the end of the Blog War. Lately, I've been preoccupied with my own little issues to notice much of what Harvey and Susie have been going through.

So, my lack of paying attention contributed to my being surprised.

Harvey announced that the Blog War was over.

And part of it is my fault.

I'm supposed to be a "Blog Tips" guru. Offering tips and help to people that might want to improve their blogging. Like I'm supposed to be able to help with that! Phin, the other guru, offered more tips than did I. My contributions were more geeky stuff and less advice or tips. And then I haven't done much of that for the last while.

Lately, readership at the Alliance down to less than 150 hits ... and less than 100 unique visitors ... a day. And that has to be really frustrating to Harvey and Susie, who have been quite preoccupied with important matters, but have continued to keep the Alliance running.

That all ends now. Harvey doesn't have the time to do this with all the other, more important, things he has to do. Susie likewise. GEBIV also. And Phin, too.

Me? Heck, I'm just a slacker. I have no excuse. I've other blogs running that I'm contributing to. So, I don't have an excuse.

So, if the closure of the Alliance bothers you, send most of the blame my way. The others have honest-to-God real reasons for needing to do other things. Not me. I'm just a slacker.

And, in order to go out with a whimper rather than a bang, I've got a Blog Tip that I've worked on and have been meaning to publish that I plan to publish ... unless they take away my access here.

It's about putting Recent Comments in your sidebar. It tells how to do it for TypePad, WordPress, and, yes, Blogger!

I will run that Thursday. If the Alliance is still up then.

I'm really going to miss this. But, like so many things, you don't miss it until it's gone.

Recent Comments in the Sidebar (yes, for Blogger, too!)

Lots of blogs have a feature in their sidebar relating to "Recent Comments." It's where you can see the most recent 5 or 10 comments that were left. Not all blogs have them, but many do.

TypePad blogs

For TypePad blogs (such as The Alliance), it's done by:

• Click on the Weblogs tab
• Click Edit Design for your blog
• Under Your Content, click Change Content Selections
• Under Your Sidebar Content, select the item Recent Comments
• Click Save Changes
• You should now be back to Weblogs > Design > Edit Current
• Click Change Ordering
• Drag Recent Comments to wherever you want it to appear. It will initially appear at the bottom, but you can drag it up to wherever you prefer. Or leave it at the bottom, if that works for you.
• Click Save Changes
• You should now be back to Weblogs > Design > Edit Current
• Click Republish Weblog
• In the popup window, select Publish All Files
• Click Publish
• Wait for your blog to republish
• Click Close

That's it! Your done with TypePad.

WordPress Widgets

In WordPress blogs (including WordPress.com) there are many ways to make it happen. One of the easiest is using Widgets. For WordPress blogs that don't use Widgets, there are plug-ins that can fill the bill.

If your WordPress blog supports Widgets, it's really easy.

• From the Dashboard, click Presentation
• If your theme supports Widgets, you have a Sidebar Widgets tab.Click Sidebar Widgets
• Under Available Widgets, drag Recent Comments to where you want it to appear in the sidebar
• If you want, you can change the title by clicking the icon on the right of the widget, then entering the new title in the box that appears
• Click Save Changes
• Your done!

WordPress Plugins

There are several plugins available that relate to comments. Each includes its own documentation, and installation will vary depending on your theme.

• Here's a highly configurable one from Bitte keine heiße Asche einwerfen. (What does that say? I don't speak German, so I hope I haven't cursed anyone's dog!)
• Here's a simpler one from G-Loaded!
• Here's the same version, widgetized by Mind matters.

All seem to work exactly as described. If you want something quick and simple, use the G-Loaded! or the Mind matters version. They are the same, except one works as a widget. If you want more functionality, and want to put more work into it, use the Bitte keine heiße Asche einwerfen version.

Blogger Comments

Yes, a Blogger version. Sort of.

You see, Blogger doesn't support this functionality. Not really. But there's a "sort of" workaround.

What it actually does is show limited information about the comments on the current page. If there are no comments on that page, no comments show in the sidebar. If there are comments on the current page, they show in the sidebar.

This does NOT work with HaloScan. If you use HaloScan for you Blogger blog, I can't help you. But, if you use Blogger comments instead of HaloScan ... and I'm of the opinion (only my opinion, mind you) ... that you should use the Blogger commenting system rather than HaloScan's. But that's a topic for another day.

If you use Blogger's comments, here's how to "sort of" add Recent Comments to the sidebar.

• Back up your template. Always back up your template before you make any changes. Always.
• Back up your template. Yes, I know I said that already. I just want you to know how serious I am about this. If you haven't backed it up and this screws you up ... well, you'll learn the hard way to back up your template. Like I said.
• From your Dashboard, select {the name of your blog}
• Click the Template tab.
• Cick Edit Current (probably already be selected).
• Make your backup of your template!! Seriously, make a backup.
• Scroll down to where you want the Recent Comments to appear. A good place is either before or after the Previous Posts section.
  • The Previous Posts section likely starts with
    <h2 class="sidebar-title">Previous Posts</h2>
    and ends with
    </ul>
• Now, at the desired location, insert this:

<MainPage>
    <h2 class="sidebar-title">Recent Comments</h2>
    <ul>
    <Blogger>
        <BlogItemCommentsEnabled>
            <BlogItemComments>
                <li>
                <$BlogCommentAuthor$> on
                <a href="<$BlogCommentPermalinkURL$>">
                <$BlogCommentDateTime$>
                </a>
                </li>
             </BlogItemComments>
        </BlogItemCommentsEnabled>
    </Blogger>
    </ul>
</MainPage>

• Click Save Template Changes
• Click Republish

That's it. View your blog to see recent comments on the front page.

See how it looks on a demo blog I have.

Want More?

If you have a question about topics like this, or a question about other blogging tips, or blogging etiquette, drop me an e-mail at basil.thinks.he.is.so.smart@gmail.com. Or contact phin. One of us will cover it in an upcoming post. Perhaps at the Alliance. Or at our respective blogs: Basil's Blog and The Phish Bowl.