A decade ago I wrote a post about blogrolls and the practical and social issues surrounding them. At the time, the version of Squarespace I was using didn’t easily support such things or at least wasn’t able to do so in a manner I liked, so I didn’t have one. Ten years later Squarespace as a hosting platform has far greater functionality, hence I recently decided to add a blogroll. That was in March this year. However it just wasn’t really fit for purpose. So I decided to revise it a few days ago and rather than just have a traditional list of blogs in a side column, I ended up producing a more comprehensive blog directory, which list two hundred plus sites alpha-numerically. I’ve been tinkering with it on and off and I am now finally happy with it. The latest update reflects the international nature of the Blaugust: Festival of Blogging and the fact that we have many blogs written in their native language. Translating text is now an integral function of web browsers, so I see no reason why these blogs should be excluded. The blog directory has been set up so that it can be easily updated with new contributors when required. Furthermore, old and obsolete details can equally be efficiently removed. While collating data from my Feedly account for the blog directory, I discovered numerous blogs that are dormant. However, because you never know who may or may not return to blogging, I have left the majority of these as part of the directory. Some blogs have been deleted by their owners or their domain have expired, so I’ve purge any dead links from the lists. The blog directory also provides the source for the 20 recently published posts widget that has also been added to the same page. It updates twice a day and is a very useful means of seeing what has been posted without having to read through absolutely everything. Again this feed includes blogs in all languages. For practical reasons I have opted to not include any preview images. The blog directory is populated by a .csv file that is hosted on GitHub. This file contains each blog’s name, website address and feed information. The directory widget reads that information and displays the participating blogs as a browsable list, as well as adding some simple navigation buttons. To add, remove or correct a blog, I simply edit the .csv on GitHub. The 20 recently published posts widget is similarly straightforward. GitHub checks the RSS or Atom feeds listed in .csv. It gathers the newest posts, sorts them by publication date and tabulates the results via JavaScript. Blogs without a working RSS feed can still appear in the blog directory but their posts cannot appear in the 20 recently published posts widget for obvious reasons. Links from both widgets take you directly to the source blogs in question. Ten years on from my original post, I feel that is important to have such facilities available and to be supportive of fellow bloggers and content creator, regardless of what platforms they use or which vertical they engage with. Over the years I have discovered numerous blogs, podcast and YouTube channels via my friends and colleagues and they have been invaluable in keeping me informed and providing different perspectives. We now live in an age where we are not always encouraged to think and express ourselves. Instead we are told just to consume generative material for a quick fix of entertainment. Hence I think we should strive to do the exact opposite, encourage independent thinking and self-expression. Let us eschew corporate bread and circuses by partaking in our own indie bread and circuses. In the meantime, if you would like your blog added to the blog directory, then let me know. Send me an email and I’ll get the list updated. Permalink