Wednesday 29 February 2012

An Apology and an Opportunity

Yesterday I realised that my Blogroll wasn't working properly and that some of the Blog's I thought I was following weren't appearing in my reading list. If you have had the faith to become a follower of BLMA then its the least I can do to return the favour*. My preferred method for linking to a Blog has usually been by clicking the Follow link in the header bar (there's one at the top of this page). But it now looks as if this link doesn't always work and even if it says I am now following a site, this isn't always the case.

So I need to apologise - If you have followed BLMA and I haven't returned the compliment then its probably down to this apparently broken link button. Assuming you still want me as a Follower, drop me a line in the comments below and I'll make sure I follow through and link to your Blog. Which leads on to the second problem I have noticed...

Several fellow Blogger's have mentioned problems with the Blogroll gadget. I suspect the problem is largely due to the number of existing Blog's exceeding the gadgets ability to list them all. Whatever the issue my Blogroll wasn't working properly and wouldn't allow me to make any changes or add new sites to the list. In the end I did what other users have done and deleted the gadget entirely. I've now reinstalled it and am rebuilding it from the ground up. As I have over 400 Blog's in my following list it will take a while to get this back up to scratch. Please bare with me in the interim, I'm working hard to correct the problem.

[*Of course I reserve the right not to follow a Blog if it isn't Wargames or Roleplaying related].

29 comments:

  1. Matey the same thing happened to me a few weeks ago now. Really weird. Got it sorted eventually, I don't think anyone really takes offence when these things happen. It's just the general shenanigans you learn to put up with when using Blogger. :)

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  2. I've experienced the same problem, Lee. Here's my blog if you want to check it out sometime:
    http://rhinexing.blogspot.com/

    Cheers!

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    1. Now following! Nice blog BTW, I'll have to take a stroll through some of your back catalogue of posts when I get time later.

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  3. Lee, just in case (http://philbancients.blogspot.com/).

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    1. Already following... Been a follower of yours for a long time now. This problem only seems to have happened in the last few months so it the more recent followers of mine that have lost out on reciprocation. Mind some have some haven't and I haven't a clue why.

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  4. No worries Lee. You show up on my followers list. If I'm not showing up on your blogroll my site is(http://seanswgcorner.blogspot.com/). But I post sporadically.
    I have found that I have to always go into the dashboard and manually add my follows to the blogroll, sometimes I forget. I almost always use the blue Follow button.
    One thing you might try is multiple bloglist widgets. I don't know what the ceiling is, but that might help so you don't max out.

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  5. And here I was thinking you had done something wrong, wot with the oops sign and all.

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  6. Apologize not my friend. Stay thirsty-

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  7. On the subject of weird Blogger bugs, I'm getting a few when I write new posts. Really irritating!

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    1. In the three years I've been using Blogger its only broken down completely once. But its the little annoying problems that take ages to fix that are the most irritating. I have to keep reminding myself that Blogger offers free hosting and in most respects is easy to use. That's the pay-off and I can live with it most of the time.

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  8. One more for the pile:


    PhilH
    http://infrequentwargamer.blogspot.com/ 

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  9. The same with mine...I apllaud you for taking the dive and redoing it..I haven´t dared to yet..:-D
    Cheers
    paul

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  10. I think that you were probably not following me, but take a look and add me if you fancy it. Thanks.

    http://ahunt-dulceetdecorum.blogspot.com/

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  11. Just looked at my blog roll and noticed it was doing the same as yours. Not sure if you were on there or not, but:

    http://justtoomuchfreetime.blogspot.com/

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  12. I am not sure what I would do if my blog roll died, I am already not speaking with blogger at the moment. :) I know I am following you but Im not sure you I am on your blog roll or not.

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  13. I've had similar issues... blogs I'd stopped following still showing up sometimes, blogs I've followed showing up sometimes and not others. It's all a bit crazy and inconsistent.

    As for following... I don't believe that it should be a case of "If I follow you, you should follow me". If that was how it worked, then you could have a rubbish blog having vast amounts of followers, just because the guy has been following every blog going and they then feel obliged to follow back.

    I only follow the blogs I'm interested in, which doesn't mean what I do is necessarily interesting to them. It's not Facebook after all.

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    1. I don't slavishly follow everything but I give most blogs a look over before adding them to my blogroll. I use Google reader to keep up to date with posts and if a site goes dead or just doesn't have the sort of content I read I do eventually delete them.

      As for the blogroll in the sidebar... it can be a bit on the LARGE side but I'm trying to keep it relevant. Hence this period of housekeeping.

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  14. Mine worked okay, I just put in Vinnie for the blogroll. There seemed to be some troubles in the past with the widget. or following someone I have always used the button next to the Followers list and never the one up on the top navbar.

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  15. As far as Blog rolls go, I couldn't add to mine so I deleted it. Added a new one but could only add 166 blogs to it. So I added another. Problem is that now I have two blog rolls to keep an eye on. The first goes up to the letter "O" and the second "P" to "Z". Thinking I might rehash them where by the blog roll one will be the more active ones and the 2nd one the quieter ones.

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    1. I'm considering running multiple blogroll's but I'm not sure how to split the lists. I thought about alphabetical but I don't like the way it looks. The other option is splitting by subject or theme but that can be hard if, like me, your Blog covers multiple periods and genres.

      I'm working on this latter option but its taking a long time.

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  16. Think you may have lost me somewhere - troubleatthemill.blogspot.com

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    1. I'm still following, you've just fallen off the Blogroll...along with about 250 others!

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  17. Your still showing as one of my followers, if you want to send any spare ones my way though I would be grateful LOL

    Also no e-mail yet regarding the book, note it's a loer case dash i.e.


    ian_willey

    Ian

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    1. I sent an email this morning...and again just a few seconds ago. I'm really chuffed about wining the book. It's made my day!

      Just in case my email is BigLeeH at Gmail dot com

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  18. Update: I've tried to break down my blogroll but I still can't feature everyone on it. So I'm now working on categorising blogs by Genre/period with a view to having multiple blogrolls in the side bar with each showing the top ten most recently updated. As you can imagine with close to 400 blogs this will take a while as I need to look at each in detail to try to work out what category to put them in.

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  19. *Final Update... My head hurts trying to get this right...

    I tried splitting my reading list by genre but I ended up with a few small lists for genre specific Blog's and one huge list for more general Blog's...which is still too large to fit in the blogroll gadget. So I think I'm going to have to resign myself to the idea that I can't put every Blog I follow on a blogroll, or even on multiple Blogroll's.

    So instead I'm going to have two Blogroll's. The first one is already up and lists my favourite Blog's, the ones I read religiously and interact with on a daily basis and those sites belonging to friends within my own gaming circle.

    The second list (the one I'm working on) will be called Featured Blog's and will be a short-list of those sites belonging to people that have contributed to BLMA or regularly comment on posts. I'll also include new Blog's I have recently discovered and wish to highlight. I'll review this list each month and update it with new Blog's, take off inactive ones etc,. Hopefully this will encourage readers to leave comments or join up as followers.

    This isn't the solution I wanted but its the best I can come up with considering the number of Blog's I read. I want to give coverage to as many Blog's as possible but clearly I can't do it for every one and I hope this compromise solution is fair on everyone.

    Incidentally I know I'm making a big deal out of this but I've always felt that one of the benefits of having a Blog is the feeling of 'community' they can create.

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  20. I am really happy to se my humble blog make it to ya fans list. Thank you. Like you I am not liking how the blog roll list works at the mo so may have to have a rethink of it. I totally agree on the community of like minded bloggers that share story's and information as being practically the why we blog what we do.
    Cheers

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  21. Was supposed to say favs list. Stupid auto correct thingy.
    Cheers

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