Blogroll Sidebar Widgets

Byrne Reese recently released the SidebarManager plugin which is an awesome plugin that allows you to manipulate your sidebar(s) through an easy to use drag and drop interface to position sidebar widgets. Here are a few widgets for MT Blogroll users, the next version of MT Blogroll will feature much tighter integration with SidebarManager as well as some more widgets.

This first one is a simple listing of all the links in your blogroll. For each link, the link's description is shown in the tooltip when someone hovers over the link and the link's relationship and target are also added if values have been entered.

<div class="module-archives module">
   <h2 class="module-header">Blogroll</h2>
   <div class="module-content">
      <ul class="module-list">
      <MTBlogrollEntries>
         <li class="module-list-item"><a href="<$MTBlogrollEntryURI$>" title="<MTBlogrollEntryDesc>"<MTIfNonEmpty tag="BlogrollEntryRel"> rel="<MTBlogrollEntryRel>"</MTIfNonEmpty> <MTIfNonEmpty tag="BlogrollEntryTarget">target="<MTBlogrollEntryTarget>"</MTIfNonEmpty>><$MTBlogrollEntryName$></a></li>
      </MTBlogrollEntries>
      </ul>
   </div>
</div>

This next block is useful for those that like to show update times on your blogroll. This code block will list all the links in your current blogroll and for each link, a star (*) will be added to the beginning of each link if it has been recently updated. The link's last update time is shown in the tooltip but if no update time is available for the link, its description is shown in the tooltip. Like the above code block, the link's relationship and target are also added if values have been entered.

<div class="module-archives module">
    <h2 class="module-header">Blogroll</h2>
    <div class="module-content">
        <ul class="module-list">
            <MTBlogrollEntries>
                <li class="module-list-item"><MTBlogrollEntryIfUpdated>\*</MTBlogrollEntryIfUpdated> <a href="<$MTBlogrollEntryURI$>" title="<MTIfNonEmpty tag="BlogrollEntryUpdated">Last Update: <MTBlogrollEntryUpdated><MTElse><MTBlogrollEntryDesc></MTElse></MTIfNonEmpty>"<MTIfNonEmpty tag="BlogrollEntryRel"> rel="<MTBlogrollEntryRel>"</MTIfNonEmpty> <MTIfNonEmpty tag="BlogrollEntryTarget">target="<MTBlogrollEntryTarget>"</MTIfNonEmpty>><$MTBlogrollEntryName$></a></li>
            </MTBlogrollEntries>
        </ul>
        <p>\* denotes a recently updated blog</p>
    </div>
</div>

This final block will loop through all your link categories and for each category, it will create a new sidebar box containing the links in the category. For each link, the link's description is shown in the tooltip when someone hovers over the link and the link's relationship and target are also added if values have been entered.

<MTBlogrollCategories>
    <div class="module-archives module">
       <h2 class="module-header">Blogroll: <MTBlogrollCategoryLabel></h2>
       <div class="module-content">
          <ul class="module-list">
          <MTBlogrollEntries>
             <li class="module-list-item"><a href="<$MTBlogrollEntryURI$>" title="<MTBlogrollEntryDesc>"<MTIfNonEmpty tag="BlogrollEntryRel"> rel="<MTBlogrollEntryRel>"</MTIfNonEmpty> <MTIfNonEmpty tag="BlogrollEntryTarget">target="<MTBlogrollEntryTarget>"</MTIfNonEmpty>><$MTBlogrollEntryName$></a></li>
          </MTBlogrollEntries>
          </ul>
       </div>
    </div>
</MTBlogrollCategories>

You can further customize these widgets or create your own

Happy New Year!

1 Comments

Steven Sheffield said:
on Nov 15, 2006 12:35 AM | Reply

When trying to rebuild after adding a blogroll link, I'm getting the following error: "Unknown action rebuild_confirm." MT 3.33, MTBlogRoll 2.51

Any ideas?