Recommendations and blogrolls on Micro.blog manton.org

@manton countdown to a hey dot com post called "blog rolls considered harmful"

@manton great 👍

@manton Oh, yes, 2024 is the year of the blogroll! 🎉 Thanks for building this into Micro.blog.

@manton Wow, this is super cool. I particularly like the auto-updating OPML file. Thanks for quick reactions to what the community is up to!

@manton Awesome! I'll be updating my blog theme this weekend to leverage this.

@manton This is excellent. Question: When I go to your "Recommended" link on your MB profile and click "Follow" on someone who is not on MB, such as Austin Kleon, what am I following? Is it an ActivityPub connection?

@manton While adding recommendations, can you ensure that the dark mode CSS is working? Currently it is unreadable.

@jmanes Oops, thanks. I'm fixing that now and will update the plug-in.

@acfusco Great question, I need to document this. No, in that case you're following the RSS feed for that blog directly in Micro.blog. (Connecting it to ActivityPub is interesting and something we might be able to do later.)

@manton Sounds great. Thank you.

@manton Curious if this looks for RSS/JSON feeds on those sites, or leaves that as an exercise for the reader. Also, I suppose this would work just as well for podcasts?

@manton I had the distinct honor of awarding the shortcode its first Github star!

@manton It was so easy to set up, thanks!!

@manton Can this be a separate page if we don’t have a sidebar? Also, a randomized list of five blogs from your blogroll via JavaScript would be a great addition.

@amerpie ⭐️

@pratik Yes, create a new page and put the shortcode in it. I forgot to add that to the help page but I'm updating it now.

@manton You and the team continue to do cool things on Micro blog! Awesome feature to bring back from the old web.

@jarrod It's partly an exercise for the reader, but there's room for improvement. For example, if a blog domain name has already been used on Micro.blog the recommendations list will link to the Micro.blog profile and include a follow link. Behind the scenes, Micro.blog is discovering the RSS feed, but that's not exposed well except in the OPML file.

@manton I love this so much. Guestbooks next?

@manton Cool! That’s actually what I hoped that the OPML would include it. It might be nice to optionally display the feed link sometimes, but I can also see how that would get messy.

@manton Woah, that is really cool! Thanks.

@manton Since this presumably works for any feed…could I put a podcast url?

@manton This is great. Thank you.

@manton if we create two blogrolls, are they displayed one after the other in a page using the Hugo shortcode?

@manton Nice — I created a couple and hopefully @mtt will add this to Tiny Theme at some point. The recent fun with Guestbooks would be a fun thing to consider for a Micro.blog feature too. 😊

@numericcitizen No, currently the shortcode only shows the one named “Recommendations”, but I’m going to add a parameter so you can specify the blogroll by name. Will do an update this week.

@jthingelstad It will be added this week.

@toddgrotenhuis You could. Right now it assumes it’s a web page, so maybe there should be some special logic for podcasts. Would be a great way to share podcast subscriptions.

@Mtt Brilliant as always. Would love for the multiple blogrolls support as well.

@jthingelstad @Mtt I wonder if this would be a good place for a microhook? Happy to help if I can.

@manton If I’m understanding it all correctly, it may not even need that much. It looks like you’ve designed it to work with just the short code (and perhaps some future parameters). In that case, I should just need to style it to match?

(I’ve only looked at it briefly on mobile only.)

@manton -- it was great fun working with you on this! it'll still be a few more days before i'll have my blogroll on scripting.com. i also have one with your list in it too. interop all the way! :-)

@Mtt @manton I wonder if there could be options to display the description field. I like that it exists to explain to people one’s choice, but I don’t see it displayed when using the shortcode.

@dave Great working with you on it! Looking forward to seeing what folks do with all of this.

@acfusco @Mtt Good point, we're not showing the description yet anywhere. Any option in the shortcode makes a lot of sense.

@Mtt Yep, mostly styling. I was thinking maybe there could be a convention for blog theme sidebars, but haven't thought it through completely yet. It's a limitation that essentially every theme needs to be updated to support this (or other features).

@manton A sidebar/widget style thing would be interesting for sure. Now you’ve got my brain going…

@manton nice one, adding as a side bar however adds a little left and right movement (Marfa) on iPhone screen on web … should I try and css fix it or wait for update to plug in?

@manton It apperars to pick up a website's shortcut icon (favicon). If people don't have it defined, it won't show up in the recommendations list, linked from the micro∙blog profile page. Firefox solves the absence by putting the first letter of the site name in the icon instead of a blank icon. Maybe that's a solution for sites that lack a favicon?

@renevanbelzen This may not be very helpful, but I checked, and it works for odd.micro.blog

@odd I put you in my recommendations as https://odd.micro.blog Click my profile, then recommendations. I'm on iPadOS 17.4, Safari. Same on RPi OS, FireFox.

@manton Cool! Though, I tried importing an OPML export from NewsBlur, and it seems like the importer ignores anything below the top level of the OPML file.

@rossk Just fixed that, thanks!

@renevanbelzen Sorry, that's fixed now!

@renevanbelzen Thanks, I think we can improve the profile icons. I'll work on it.

@manton Ooooh, this is nice! Well done. 👌🏻

@manton I look forward to integrating this in to the Cards Theme as well. I'm not certain yet what that looks like, though. Perhaps an optional side menu that appears if the feature is enabled.

I'm personally looking forward to parameters for the short code to show specific lists, preferably on the same page.

@ericgregorich here’s my blogroll page built with the blogroll shortcode, in Cards Theme, if you want to see how it looks. www.estebantxo.com/blogroll

@eumrz Yes. I have one setup also. blog.ericgregorich.com/blogroll/ My comment was more about how I can make it a built-in feature of the Cards Theme so it would appear as a side menu on the home page.

@Mtt FYI, I've updated the shortcode plug-in and there's now a simple class="blogroll" on the list for easier styling.

@ericgregorich Just updated the plug-in to have a "name" parameter to specify a different blogroll.

@ericgregorich oh, of course, I misunderstood :)

@manton Worked like a charm. Since you used simple lists for the layout, it should work fine with any theme on posts/pages. I do think adding that class was a good idea, and will allow for some cool one-off customizations.

@jthingelstad It works already with Tiny theme on posts and pages. Don't even need to update.

@jthingelstad Multiples supported as well.

@manton Thanks! I can't seem to make it work yet, though. I created a new Blogroll called “Blogs”, added a few links, then and added this short code {{< blogroll name="Blogs" >}} but my list of links under the Blogs are not loading, only the one test link I have under Recommendations. blog.ericgregorich.com/blogroll/

@ericgregorich Go into Plug-ins and click "Upgrade" on the new version of the blogroll shortcode plug-in. I made that change today but it requires updating to the latest version, then it should start working.

@Mtt Excellent.

@manton Got it. Forgot it was a separate plugin.

@manton Speaking of styling, how are you doing it on your own blog, if you don’t mind me asking? I added a couple of recommendations, and they show up as “name: url”, all of it linked. You have a much cooler linked URL, and the unlinked name. Also, the optional comment text does not show up, either on the list, or the back-office. I can’t seem to find it, as soon as it’s saved. And, last one, cannot edit recommendations. Have to delete and add again. Cool one, though.

@maique I wasn't sure where to put the comment yet, so it's currently not used. I'm thinking maybe it should be an option when using the shortcode. For the styling... Try something like this CSS.

@manton Thank you 😊 Working brilliantly.

@manton Yes please on the optional comment in the shortcode!

@jarrod @manton and editing current entries and moving entries between blogrolls, too!

@manton Just to say, I finally got with the program and 🖇️ just enabled my Blogroll. Nice. Very Nice. Thankyou. The downside is that it has made me realize how much neglect there has been on my part to tend to my RSS garden. So status report.

Enable Blogroll ... ✅

Tending To The Blogroll Garden ... 😰

One (quick in the end) job down - one (much bigger job) added.

GAH.

@jarrod wait - auto updating? I missed that. In fact just commeted on my page how cool it would be if I could do that.