In defense of the sanctimonious women's studies set || First feminist blog on the internet

Blog tweaks: sidebar widgets

tigtog

I’ve just added a Most Commented Recent Posts widget to the sidebar under the Recent Comments widget. The idea is that it will help people find those lively conversations from the last few weeks and keep those discussions going after the posts themselves roll off the front page.

The number of links displayed in both widgets can be tweaked. At the moment I have twice as many links in the Most Commented Posts widget as in the Recent Comments widget, in order to encourage people to not only look at the most recently commented posts. Thoughts?

ObGeek: the relevant plugin at wordpress.org

6 thoughts on Blog tweaks: sidebar widgets

  1. I’ll admit, as much as I’m sometimes partly to blame for The Threads That Would Not Die, I’m not always sad to see them finally shuffle off… I tend to prefer “what are people commenting on now???” to “what have 10000000 people already commented on ad nauseam???” I do get sad when an interesting thread seems to die prematurely, but some of the “most commented posts” are also the “most sick of already” posts too.

    But I am also a cantankerous scrooge who hates change and my opinions should be weighed accordingly.

    (Much appreciation for the behind-the-scenes work as ever, tigtog.)

  2. I love it! I am also a contributor to the zombie threads of doom from time to time.

    Some thoughts from an nontechnical reader…Is there any way to easily exclude posts with closed comment? Also, I suspect shameless self promotion sundays will always be in the top group so there may be two or three of them depending on how long the duration is. Maybe “recent” could be the last week? But then that might exclude older interesting posts…so hrmm…

    1. Is there any way to easily exclude posts with closed comment?

      No. While technically/theoretically you can do just about anything with PHP, the downside is that the more conditions in the database an operation has to check the longer it takes to process and it doesn’t take too long until you end up hanging the entire blog when you’re asking something to check a database as huge as Feministe’s.

      Maybe “recent” could be the last week? But then that might exclude older interesting posts…so hrmm…

      At the moment it’s set for the last two weeks. This is configurable depending on what seems to work best.

  3. I think it’s great idea, but I think I have been scarred by too many hateful trolls myself (not on this site). I rarely read comments to my comment, even those on my own blog. Maybe I can put my fears aside…

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