Update (November 7):
Google Reader implemented the feature described in this post.
Bloglines has
a feature that lets you automatically create a blogroll from the feeds you've subscribed to. This way, you don't have to maintain your blogroll because it's permanently in sync with your subscriptions. "On many blogs, there are lists of links to other blogs. These lists are called blogrolls. You can incorporate your Bloglines subscriptions into your blog, as a blogroll, by including a small piece of HTML that loads a script from Bloglines."
Many people want the same feature in
Google Reader, but don't know it's already available, albeit not in a transparent way. Because you don't want to include in a blogroll all your subscriptions, you could share a folder (in Google Reader, a feed can be placed in multiple folders). So how to convert all the subscriptions from a folder to a nice list that can be added to a blog?
1. You need to add all the blogs you want to share to a folder. This can be easily done from the settings: select the blogs, click on "more actions" and add them to that folder (Google Reader calls it a tag, but you should ignore that).
2. To make your subscriptions visible outside your account, the folder should become public. Go to the Tags tab from the settings and click on the small broadcasting icon next to your folder. The icon should become orange and the word "private" should be replaced by "public". In the screenshot below, cool-blogs is a public folder.
3. Copy the link for "view public page". It should look like this:
http://www.google.com/reader/shared/user/[NUMBER]/label/[FOLDERNAME]
Then enter the link below and click on "Build".
4. Copy the code in your blog's template. In Blogger, you could paste the code in a new HTML/JavaScript element.
I've also included an option to save the blogroll as an OPML file that can be easily imported in most feed readers.
Related:
Customize Google Reader's clipsLabels: Google Reader, Tips
Olivia said on August 4, 2007 5:36 AM PDT:
amazing!
thanks so much for that info! I'm definitely letting all of my friends know about this :)
meeyauw said on August 4, 2007 7:14 AM PDT:
I like the way google puts a folder of five to ten items on your blog, but it wasn't enough. This is excellent used in conjunction with their little things. I can keep another list of hot blogs and take them out if need be without going to another site, grabbing code and then updating the page element.
nice stuff
presveva said on August 4, 2007 7:50 AM PDT:
thanks for this script. :D
Very nice! For the technically inclined I wrote a
python script to convert Google's OPML to a sorted
HTML list.
@Silas:
It should work with any OPML file, I suppose. Unfortunately, there's no public URL for Google Reader's OPML, so you'll have to run the script periodically to update the HTML page.
Guillermo said on August 4, 2007 9:48 AM PDT:
I like it... But I like more how you did your archive section in your main page.
thadk said on August 4, 2007 10:12 AM PDT:
Thanks, that was a painless way to assemble a futureproof blog list. Been meaning to do that.
It isn't quite perfect though as one of the reasons to make a blogroll is the google-PageRank-points one sends from the crosslinking. This javascript won't be interpreted by the googlebot. This could be a feature or a bug, depending on which behavior you're looking for. Still, might be worth coding up quickly in PHP to do server-side.
Matt said on August 4, 2007 11:17 AM PDT:
Cool idea, I love using Google services to add functionality on my site. I recently got familiar with Google Custom Search to set up a blog search, check it out.
http://positionabsolute.net/blog/2007/08/implement-custom-search.php
Cheers,
Matt
Mungo said on August 4, 2007 2:00 PM PDT:
Brilliant! I am a big user of Google Reader, and have now added all of my Camping links to my camping blog!!!
Thanks a million!
Mungo Says Bah!
great script! thanks a lot!
The generator is not working here in all browsers I use, can you please post a general script and explaining where to put the public link?
Thank you so much.
If this does not happen, then this is my link
https://www.google.com/reader/shared/user/05964485821116167561/label/blogs
and please someone post the script here or kindly emailing it to me.
Thank you so much for this post :).
@irc president:
Try again, it should work now. I wasn't smart enough to anticipate that someone would enter the SSL version of the address.
Very clever of you to figure all this out :)
OPML export for the blogroll is also supported, simply replace the "javascript-sub" in the URL with "subscriptions", e.g.:
http://www.google.com/reader/public/subscriptions/user/10949413115399023739/label/officialgoogleblogs-all
Mihai Parparita
Google Reader Engineer
Neat, it works really well. I'm going to use it on all my blogs.
I really like that I can control what is on my blog roll from within Google Reader.
Chris said on August 7, 2007 9:54 AM PDT:
What about for use in Wordpress?
I don't use WordPress, Chris, but there must be a way to insert some JavaScript/HTML code in the template.
Scott said on August 8, 2007 9:35 AM PDT:
Is there an upper limit to the length of the blogroll that can be generated? I'm experimenting with this and have a 325-feed roll that currently throws a server error when I try to generate the callback code.
Dan said on August 8, 2007 4:37 PM PDT:
That worked great! Thanks.
Chasida said on August 12, 2007 6:27 AM PDT:
thank you for this - very useful. one question: as i have my blogs in different categories i am trying to include headings before the blog list. it works with the first list but when i put in code for the others it turns up at the bottom of the list instead of the top. any ideas how to change this?
I updated the code so you can add more blogrolls in a single web page.
Donovan said on August 14, 2007 8:38 AM PDT:
I tried this as a widget in the side bar of a WordPress 2.2.2 and it works fine. It doesn't however, work on a page... which is a bummer. I would like to figure out why, but don't have the time to figure it out. If someone does beat figure out how to make it work on a WordPress page, I would appreciate the comment being posted on here.
SYM said on September 1, 2007 1:41 AM PDT:
that's not work from two weeks ago.
Care to elaborate? I tested this and it works.
Hey. I really like the script, and I have a question/request:
Is there a way to output the list so that it is not line-broken, but instead broken by a character like a "/" or something like that?
Thanks!
cjcom2001 said on September 10, 2007 8:02 PM PDT:
I really love the idea of this but I am having a bit of a problem following the last direction. Which template file should this be placed? I tried a couple different ideas and I would love it to be in my blogroll.php file - that file is super short and I can't figure out where to put the code. I know, I'm new! Thanks! Kathy
Steve said on September 11, 2007 7:49 PM PDT:
Ionut,
This is great. Any chance you could answer a few technical questions that the rest of the commenters weren't interested in?
This is the default JavaScript URL when a clip is created:
http://www.google.com/reader/public/javascript/user/[NUMBER]/label/[tagname]?n=5&callback=jsfunc
This is the JavaScript URL your tool creates.
http://www.google.com/reader/public/javascript-sub/user/[NUMBER]/label/[tagname]?callback=jsfunc
Where did you learn about this javascript-sub folder, and does the -sub have any meaning that you know of? Is is for subscriptions?
This is the OPML URL for a tag. It doesn't appear to be affected by the public/private status of a tag. I found that odd.
http://www.google.com/reader/public/subscriptions/user/[NUMBER]/label/[tagname]
Do you know of any plans to make this a standard feature of Reader?
Also, I added a new tag today, and noticed that Reader now keeps whatever text you type in. In the past, if you typed Cool Sites for a tag name, Reader would convert it to lowercase and replace spaces with hyphens (cool-sites). Now it keeps the tag as you type it. I found this a bit annoying because I like the tags to be in the same format, so I now either have to format the tags the old Reader way, or change all my existing tags to the new format. I know, there's probably some medicine for that.
Just great, thank you!
Any tips on querying for a list of all shared tag (folder) names?
My goal is to output a list of all shared tags and the feeds within, up-to-date with any tag changes (additions/deletions/edits) I might've made.
I can use
/reader/public/subscriptions/user/ to output parse-able OPML, but only when logged in, and, therefore, not in a scheduled/programmatic manner using wget (AFAIK).
@Steve:
The link was referenced in other places. Google Reader actually has a very cool API, but it wasn't documented and officially launched because it may change.
@Jeff:
I don't think that's possible and Google Reader doesn't want to make it easy to find the shared feeds (it's likely that users don't want that either).
SYM said on September 27, 2007 12:54 AM PDT:
i have a question. is there a way for customize this script. add "br" tag or show updated blogs in bold, or show only updated blogs.
thanks
I don't know what "updated blogs" means. Maybe blogs that were updated in the past X days/hours?
You could use the other output for a label that shows the latest items. Copy the code for
clips from Google Reader,
customize the callback function and change the n= parameter from the URL to reflect the number of posts you want to analyze. So you'll read the latest 50 posts, add the blog titles and URLs to a data structure and make sure it doesn't contain duplicates.
SYM said on September 28, 2007 10:39 PM PDT:
yes, but i want to show the name of blog instead of latest posts.
Justice said on October 4, 2007 11:11 AM PDT:
What Sym is asking for is what bloggers will get from a blog roll often used by bloggers
this is a blogroll that is commonly used by bloggers from before beta.
It is set to display the name of the blog in a way that you know when that blog has been updated
in your blogroll
for example
If my blog has a new post it will show new post or updated
sadly blogroll.com has become unreliable (keeps going down.)
Now I am hoping with the goggle - Beta blogger merger that blogroll powered by goggle is like blogroll powered by blogroll.com
this is what sym was asking and frankly if it doesnt have it then its not all that useful...
no differently then adding links yourself
its the fact that blogroll.com's blogroll shows when a blog has been updated that makes a blogroll unique and so valued
why it was so popular and widely used
ssasfdser said on October 11, 2007 2:02 PM PDT:
This is awesome! Kudos for figuring tthis out. I have it implemented and working but would like to change the font/font size of the blogroll text to match my blog.
Is there a way to do that?
G-Man
said on October 27, 2007 10:07 PM PDT:
Thanks - that code is so cool. I've been looking for a way to share the umpteed feeds in my Google Reader with the visitors to my website.
Tweaked it slightly to generate a ul, li set.
Thanks again.
JN said on December 7, 2007 2:40 AM PDT:
this Google reader blogroll is useless without the updated funtion that Sym and Justice talks. Thats what Bloglines blogrolls does: in the blogroll list it shows first the latest's blogs to be updated, sorting them in an updated timing basis... and just the name of the blog, not the posts. Figure this as a feed but only with the blog name in it. Thats what blogrools are for, otherwise they are just a list of links, sorted alphabetical. Google is making too much noise for nothing, about this blogroll thing. Come on, guys, do the work as it as to be done... that's what we expect: updated blog lists in blogroll, please.
Meanwhile, i'm going to rollback to my Bloglines blogroll's.
Alex said on February 23, 2008 8:46 PM PDT:
Very helpful. Thanks! It looks like now they've added a link to add the blogroll automatically once you've followed the first two steps you give.
Thank You, it works, but,,,,
the link is not locate at source code...? i think this is not good for making backlinks farm to SEO ....
Well, I used JavaScript to fetch the links and they are obviously not included in the source code. You might build a similar server-side code or just copy the links in your blog.
TD said on June 17, 2008 10:17 AM PDT:
Any way to include this script or the blogger widget with a randomizing feature to display X random blogs in the blogroll?
@TD:
Why not? Just edit the code a little bit.
Generate m random integer values between 1 and data.items.length, place them in an array a[].
for (var i=0; i < m; i++) {
var item = data.items[a[i]];
...........................
}
TD said on June 17, 2008 9:34 PM PDT:
I bow to those who can code, I am not one of them. Where would I insert the code you show here? Is it otherwise ready to copy/paste?
thx
TD said on June 19, 2008 3:43 PM PDT:
for (var i=0; 1 < 10; i++) {
var item = data.items[a[i]];
i tried this without success?
Any suggestions?
@TD:
That was just a small replacement you needed to make in the original code.
Generate the code and replace:
for (var i=0; i < data.items.length; i++) {
var item = data.items[i];
with
var len = data.items.length;
var m = Math.min(10, len);
var a = new Array(len);
for (var i=0; i < len; i++)
a[i]=i;
for (i=0; i < m; i++) {
var ran = Math.floor(Math.random() * (len-i))+i;
var temp=a[i];
a[i]=a[ran];
a[ran]=temp;
var item = data.items[a[i]];
Note: 10 is the number of items that are displayed, but you can change the value.
jaz said on August 2, 2008 4:21 AM PDT:
I suppose google reader already has this feature
