How To Create An Auto-Updating Blogroll

I did something really cool yesterday.

I created this…

(Look to the right of this post and you will see it in the widgets section)

I technically have a “Blogroll” page already, but it is such a freaking pain to update that thing when I find new blogs that I love.

While I was screwing around with Google Reader yesterday, I figured out that you can actually have Google Reader create a blogroll widget for you.

It only takes about two minutes and it’s so simple to add and remove blogs.

How To Create An Auto-Updating Blogroll

1. Go to your Google Reader and click on settings.

2. Next, you’ll want to go to the tab called “subscriptions.”

3. Once you get to that tab, you need to create a blogroll folder. Select one of the subscriptions that you want to add to your blogroll and click “New Folder” from the drop down menu.

4. Name your folder.

5. Now, you need to do the same for all of the blogs that you want on your blogroll. The easiest way is to click the “select all” button and manually un-check all of the blogs that you want to exclude.

6. Once you have done this, go to the “more actions” drop down menu and select the name of your blogroll folder.

7. Ok, we’re almost done! I promise! Now, go to the “Folders and Tags” section and click the button to make your new folder public (it’s the weird symbol next to “private”).

8. On the same page, click the “add a blogroll to your site” button.

9. You should get a page that looks like this.

10. If you’re using WordPress, you can simply add this JavaScript code to a text widget.

Now you have a blogroll on your site!

Easy as cake right?

Another great thing about this updating blogroll is that you can easily remove someone if you unsubscribe from their feed. I’m constantly adding and removing blogs, so this definitely saves me a lot of time!

If you have a lot of time, feel free to create different blogrolls with different folders based on groups. For example, you could create a blogroll for runners, recipe blogs, ect…

I think I’m happy with what I have though. Go make yourself a blogroll!

Tagged as: Blogroll, How To, Tech Posts