Update Your Blogroll Automatically

I used to use WordPress’ built-in blogroll capabilities. No more — it was too much work. My blogroll now updates automatically to always show the feeds I’m reading. Here’s how you can do it, too:

  1. Set up Google Reader as your RSS reader. I suspect other online readers would also work, but I know Google’s does.
  2. Create a tag to apply to each feed that will show up in the blogroll. Being quite the original, I used blogroll.
  3. Apply this blogroll tag to those feeds you want in your blogroll. If you read a lot of feeds, this can take some time. Use it like I did to delete feeds that no longer update or that you don’t really read anymore.
  4. From Google Reader, select Settings > Tags and make the blogroll tag public, then select “add a blogroll to your site.” I chose the “none” color scheme so I could style the appearance myself. If you are putting your blogroll on a Blogger blog, you might want to select one of the pre-styled versions.
  5. Cut and paste the code from the previous step to display where you want it. WordPress has widgets (or the K2 Sidebar Modules that I prefer) and Blogger has template settings to configure your blog’s appearance.

That’s it — you’re done. Next time you subscribe to a new feed, decide whether you want it displayed on your blogroll. If you do, apply the blogroll tag and it will automatically show. Delete a feed from your reader and it’s gone from your blogroll. No additional work is necessary.

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