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How to add recent comments to your Blogspot blog

by Brad Linder on February 11, 2008 at 03:00 PM

If your blog client of choice is Google's Blogger, odds are you've banged your head against a wall at least a few times wondering why Blogger can't be a bit more like WordPress or TypePad. While Blogger is incredibly easy to use, it's a bit more difficult to customize. But with a bit of work, you can tweak your Blogger site to near-perfection.

For example, while Google doesn't offer a "recent comments" widget, Blogger buster has created a simple widget generator that lets you build and add a recent comments section to your sidebar. You can customize how comments appear by choosing how many comments to display, whether to show the date or post titles, and how many characters to include in the preview.

[via MakeUseOf]

Tags: blogger, blogspot, recent-comments, widget

Comments

Victor Agreda, Jr.Feb 11th 2008 3:29PM

Neutral

What Google doesn't want to do, others will hack for use. Just like Gmail :)

nice tip!

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Paul NicholsonFeb 11th 2008 5:09PM

Neutral

This isn't done by Blogger or Google. It is a 3rd party add-on and starts setting cookies from their sites too.

Easiest way to add comments to your Blogger blog is to just add your own comments feed as a feed on your sidebar. The comments feed is always-- http://[username].blogspot.com/feeds/comments/full

Thanks for playing.

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Paul NicholsonFeb 11th 2008 5:10PM

Neutral

You can see an example on my blog of course: http://paulnich.blogspot.com

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BlogspotFeb 12th 2008 10:50AM

Neutral

Paul Nicholson is correct, you only need to add a feed URL on your sidebar. To do that, just type http://changethiswithyourblogURL/feeds/comments/full.

Also, you can get free blogspot templates at http://www.iblogall.com/search/label/Free%20Templates

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Free Blog TemplatesFeb 14th 2008 6:45AM

Neutral

Yep, Blogger Buster's widget generator is cool but the other guys are right. If you want to just add a new page element you can do it that way instead. I've written up some directions on how to do it for Recent Comments and even for Recent Posts.

http://www.eblogtemplates.com/setup-recent-posts-recent-comments/

Thanks,

David
http://www.eblogtemplates.com

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Claus ValcaFeb 15th 2008 12:04PM

Neutral

These are all great comments.

For folks who like making things difficult and want to go with a JavaScript solution, I found (and am using) a great solution that I am able insert and host myself directly from within my Blogger template:

Recent Comments Feed Widget - Tips for New Bloggers
http://tips-for-new-bloggers.blogspot.com/2007/09/recent-comments-feed-widget.html

Copy the JavaScript from this page (where you can review it to your heart's content first), and paste it into a HTML/JavaScript widget page element in your blogger layout page.

Change the variables in the script to match your needs (and don't forget to update the feed URL with the one particular to your own blog).

Save and done.

Sure it isn't quite a simple as the others proposed by Paul, Blogspot, and Free Blog Templates, but it does provide a very elegant solution for those concerned about off-site, third-party .js hosting.

--Cheers!