A New Page Element - The Blog List

Along with several key fixes to Blogger this week, the release contained one useful new page element - the Blog List. A Blog List is a combination of a Linklist (aka BlogRoll) and a Feed Reader, where you specify a series of feeds, and it generates a linklist with each feed as a separate item in the linklist.

The Blog List improves on our Link List page element by using blogs’ RSS and Atom feeds to show update times, post titles, and snippets.

You have several options that let you decide what you want to show in each Blog List.

• Icon. When available, you can present a favicon from each site in the list.
• Title. You can present the title of the most recent item, in each feed.
• Snippet. You can present a snippet of the most recent item, in each feed.
• Update Date. You can present the date of last update, of each feed.

With all of that said, there is a key difference between a Blog List and a Link List.

• A Blog List is a list of blog posts feeds. Each item in a blog list will be the URL of the posts feed for one blog, though you can enter a URL of any blog component, with the feed URL apparently derived from what you enter. You can have only 1 entry for any blog, in a blog list.
• A Link List is a list of URLs. Each item in a link list may depict a single, unique blog. Each item can be any URL that you wish.

If you leave off the Snippet and Update Date selections from a Blog List, you'll end up with what looks like a Linklist. And it appears that the rollout of the Blog List gadget, from Draft to Operational status, involved converting some Blog List items into what look like Linklist items. If your blog has what looks like a new linklist, which contains items with feed URLs, that is what happened. If you edit this page element, you'll see a series of feeds listed, with some apparently corrupt, possibly depicted with red Xs. These are URLs that do not lead to a valid feed. You'll have to delete and re add each URL so listed, if any one represents an item that you intended to lead to a feed.

And that illustrates another key difference between a Blog List and a Linklist. The linklist wizard lets you edit the label, or the link URL, for any item in the list. The blog list wizard lets you only edit the label of an item ("rename") - if you wish to change the link URL, you have to delete and re add the entry.

Just don't confuse the Blog List page element with the Linklist page element. Each has its own place in your blog.

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