Create RSS Or BlogRoll Widget From Your Feeds Using Google Reader

Many blogs use these widgets and most of the bloggers use Google Reader. So let me show you how these two things can be combined to build a more efficient knowledge sharing widget for your blog.

Things You will Need

All you need is a free Google Reader account which is almost common for any blogger. The widget can be placed on all popular blogging platforms. Though I’ll be demonstrating using my Wordpress powered blog.

Before creating this simple widget, you will need to add all relevant feeds to your Google Reader i.e if you are willing to show a blogroll widget, add all the blogroll blogs’ feeds to your Google Reader. Another thing worth mentioning here, is that all the relevant feeds should reside within a single folder. This is done for accumulating all in one place.

Create a RSS Widget Using Google Reader

I’ll be creating a RSS Widget for the folder “Portable Apps”, which contains all my resources for portable applications.

Step#1 : Go to Settings > Reader Settings of Google Reader. It could be found at the top-right corner of the window.

Step#2 : Go to the tab “Folders and Tags”.

Step#3 : Select the checkbox beside the folder “Portable Apps” and change sharing options at the top to “Public”.

Step#4 : Now you will see some links appearing to the right of the folder “Portable Apps”. Click the link “add a clip to your site”.

Step#5 : A widget editor will open, customize the parameters depending on your needs and copy the code in the box below.

Step#6 : Now login to your WP Dashboard and go to Appearance > Widgets. Add a text Widget(to any place, depending on your theme and requirements) and add the code here. Now “Save” the widget.

Step#7 : That is all, check out the preview.

Every widget will be unique as every one will have a different set of feeds. The more useful sources you have the more informative is your widget.

Create BlogRoll Widget Using Google Reader

I’ll be creating a Blogroll Widget for the folder “Buddy Bloggers”, which includes all the feeds from the blogs I feel like I’m competing.

Step#1 : Follow the steps #1 and #2 in the previous section.

Step#2 : Select the checkbox beside the folder “Buddy Bloggers” and change sharing options at the top to “Public”.

Step#3 : Here again you will see some links appearing beside the folder “Buddy Bloggers”. Click the link “add a blogroll to your site”.

Step#4 : Now follow the steps #5, #6 and #7 from the previous section.

Instead of showing a blogroll consisting of links to your buddy bloggers, use RSS widget for the same, that way, your readers will also get an idea about their(buddy bloggers) recent posts as well.

Why Do We Need It

Blogs are primarily meant for a knowledge sharing purpose, but like me, all other bloggers has a long feed reading list, which keeps increasing enormously everyday. Hence, its never possible to share everything with your readers even though, many are worth sharing. But using this free widget, you can share all the feeds with your readers without writing a single word. I know, you can never put detailed thoughts for them. But, something is always better than nothing.

So from now on, every time your feed list increases, you do need to panic of not being able to tell what’s worth telling. The widget gets auto-updated and your readers are duly informed all the time. The widget is very easy to customize and use. The minimalist design keeps things simple for your readers. Though as this has a Jscript query, it may burden the page-loading, but, not that much.

Well that is all for now, I know, there were and always will be mixed thoughts about these petty little things, but this idea intrigued me a lot and hence I couldn’t stop myself writing a few words. But, I’m always open to criticism, so, feel free to comment on it.