Blog Stuff: BlogRoll Script... Customize

Now that you've got the code, make it yours.

The whole point of the BlogRoll Multi-Browser SideBar Script is make the BlogRolling.com sidebar more accessable to your readers and especially more customizable to your site.

So, here's how to install and customize it.

First, please don't change anything in the code that goes into the <HEAD> of your page. All the customizations are done in the second part of the script, the part that goes in your page's <BODY> section.

Next, for the script to call your BlogRoll, you must install your BlogRoll ID number. There are five places in the <BODY> part of the script where you'll need to replace "[insert your BlogRoll ID number here]" with your actual BlogRoll ID from Blogrolling.com.

For example my BlogRoll ID number is the bold part of http://www.blogrolling.com/br/sidebar.phtml?r= 70a7e8c5f975e36b6a677b0ac2022b03. So I would replace the four instances of "[insert your BlogRoll ID number here]" with "70a7e8c5f975e36b6a677b0ac2022b03". You can get your BlogRoll ID number from the standard code or sidebar code on Blogrolling.com.

The next step is to add a standard link to the Non-Javascript Browser Code section. This is where you would account for browsers that either don't support JavaScript, or in which JavaScript has been disabled. I would suggest making it a standard hyperlink to a page that includes your BlogRoll through PHP or RSS (see Blogrolling.com for this code).

As written, the BlogRoll Multi-Browser SideBar Script creates text hyperlinks. You can leave them like that, or change them around. Any kind of text or image or even form button link can be used in place of what I've written.

For example, here's what the IE BlogRoll link looks like by default:

'<a href="javascript:void(open
(\'http://www.blogrolling.com/br/sidebar.phtml?r=
[insert your BlogRoll ID number here]
\',\'_search\'))" target="_self">BlogRoll Sidebar</a>',

The hyperlink code you'd want to leave alone (other than inserting your BlogRoll ID), but the "BlogRoll Sidebar" part, the text link itself, you might want to replace with an image or form button. The same for the Netscape, Opera, Mozilla, and Alternate code. The most important thing to remember is that, whatever you put in there, must not have any quotation marks ("). If it does, replace them all with apostrophes ('). If the script doesn't work on your site, look for quotes in the code.

A special note: If you're thinking about putting the first part of the script (from the <HEAD> section) in an external .JS file, you should be aware that the Opera code won't work. Opera 6.x has a bug interpretting certain JavaScript commands in an external file.

That's it! You're set to go! Enjoy, and let me know if you find the script useful.