For those of you who don't read my AIS Blog, then a quick intro is needed for my first ever WordPress Plugin. What this simply does is take the RSS feeds supplied under the WordPress blogroll (if you have entered them in) and retrieves the most recent post from each site. It then takes the 5 most recent posts and displays them in the sidebar under the heading 'What Others Are Saying'. This combines the idea of linking someone with the idea of showing what that person is actually writing about too. I've often been on a site, looked at the external links but the title just hasn't got any oomph to get me to click on it. However a good post title can pull people in.

There is a certain widget that does something similar, except you can't control who is on your list, nor can you control what is on the list, as I discovered within 36 hours of putting it on my site (let's just say X rated post title, not for the under 18s). This plugin provides natural, non JavaScript, links, usually direct to the blog post. I say usually as there is one feed that I'm still trying to get the true URL to come out as Feedburner is getting in the way!

You can see it in action below my Top Commentators and Most Commented section on the sidebar. Mine updates every 3 hours so as to not overload the feeds in my blogroll.

If you want to give it a try then I'd love to hear your feedback.

» What Others Are Saying Plugin.

I've had a bit of a clean up on this blog this evening. After spending the earlier evening going through the bedroom, drawers and boxes of various 'rubbish' to hopefully make a bit of cash on, selling at a car boot sale (more on that at make money from rubbish), I decided to finally do a few updates on this site that I'd been meaning to do for a while.

First up was to alter my comments.php theme file to set my own comments to stand out a little. Michael's post on how to style author comments differently prompted me to do this. In the past I've used the Author Highlight plugin, but after Michael's comment of how much extra work this is, and after reviewing the plugin page I realised he was right (I'm sure I didn't do that much work last time to add it!). So instead I used a little of the code on his post, but altered it to simply check if the user ID of the commentator was 1, which is my user ID as admin of the blog. This means if I decide to update my email address in the future I don't have to think about the fact that things will stop working or use excess code to cover each email address So now my comments are highlighted with a dark red background and white text for my name and posting time. I figured it's enough to make me stand out.

I've also cleaned up my sidebar and moved my external links into their own Links page. I've also finally got the list updated with all the sites I've recently added to my feedreader and highly recommend. The latest few being Pro Blog Design, Random Jabber, It's an Online World, and also a relatively new blogging forum, The Blog Experiment, run by Sara, this blog's current top commentator

So I hope you find something of interest on the links. For sites mainly geared towards money making, these can be found at my AIS Links page.

Finally I've updated my Contact form to actually be a contact form and not just a page with the comments set to on! I'll post up the two page templates I've used for this later in the week when I have time. It's gone midnight here now so it's time for bed

As a blogger we all love having comments on posts. It means that people are reading for a start, it also means that you've written something that someone feels compelled to remark on. However, can it get to the point where your posts are being swamped with comments and perhaps it's not so good? A couple of blogs that I read constantly get 15-20+ comments. One blog I've been reading for over a year, others are newer on my reading list. I think it's great for the author, clearly they're doing well with their posts, however it can sometimes put me off commenting.

Perhaps it's just me, probably is I may read exceptionally busy sites such as Shoemoney but I would never comment. Why not? Partly because I don't think that my comment would really have much impact, and that on a site such as that, some people just comment for the sake of commenting on a busy site and I don't like to be thought of like that. Also often when a post gets an exceptional amount of comments, your comment can be a little lost in the crowd.

I've never tried to belong to a very busy forum either, well I've tried places such as SitePoint, but I felt that the community feel wasn't there as posters didn't really know each other besides the main moderators. I prefer a slightly smaller tight-knit place, and I guess the same goes for blogs and the commentators.

Of course I don't want blogs not to grow for people, and I'm not saying that I'd stop reading a blog because it's suddenly popular, but I do feel a little intimidated when a blog continually receives a lot of comments.

I know, I'm strange

We all like to offer our opinion. It's human nature However the more blogs you read, the more comments you make, and then the inevitable happens – the more chance you have of losing track of where you've left a comment!

I'm not one for making a comment and then ignoring any response it gets. I believe than a blog owner should try to ensure they at least acknowledge comments left by their visitors, and if the visitor's comment requires a response then the owner should give it one. So hoping and presuming that a blog owner will perhaps reply to my comment I do try to ensure I return to that particular post to check on the comments.

For the blogs I comment on frequently, I subscribe to the comment feed as well. Even if it's not advertised, if it's a WordPress site you can simply go to http://www.domain.com/comments/rss2/ and the comments feed should show up. This way you can track all the comments made, afterall whilst the post may not have sparked a comment from you, another person's comment or question may well do.

However I am starting to find that I'm losing track of posts I comment on. I've added a few new blogs to my reading list and whilst I may not comment often I still make the occassional comment. I guess I could add any post I comment on to Del.icio.us and then revisit them during the week. That's one option. I could always just bookmark them in a commented folder on my browser too. I have done this in the past with one or two.

So how do you remember where you've commented? Or do you really care?!

No, not a guest blogger here (who'd want to! ). I was asked last week if I'd like to write a couple of posts for another blog whilst the owner was away for the week so I figured it was worth a go and would write about WordPress and using it as a static site. This is only a brief introduction really, and it won't take the place of my WordPress tutorials (which I'll get back onto writing in September, once this manic week has passed!).

There's been a lot of debate on Guest Posts which I kept in mind when writing mine. Hopefully I've done Guest Bloggers justice. It seems to have been well received so far after the first post, the second is scheduled for about 2pm today (GMT).

Anyhow, you can read the first post on Blogtrepreneur at Building a Static Site Using WordPress.

Hope you like it

Update: Second post is online – Part 2