Blog'n'Roll

Matthias runs the wonderful newsletter Own Your Web, which delves into topics related to personal websites every two weeks. In the eighth edition, Matthias focuses on Blogrolls.

While reading the newsletter, I always feel a bit nostalgic because it often discusses topics that have been around for so long but have somewhat faded away. Blogrolls certainly fall into that category.

They originated from the early days of blogs and serve the purpose of networking. Essentially, Blogrolls are nothing more than simple lists of blogs that one enjoys reading and wants to recommend to others. Matthias has already explained this wonderfully and in much more detail here.

I also have a Blogroll. Until the last redesign, you could find it in the classic sidebar of my blog. However, now the sidebar is gone, and the entire fun has moved down towards the footer.

In the replies to Matthias' article, many bloggers have posted a direct link to their own Blogroll. So, they not only have a list of blogs in the sidebar (like me) but also a dedicated page.

I find the idea quite good, especially if all bloggers follow the same pattern, allowing anyone to simply add /blogroll to the URL of any blog to see their Blogroll.

I also had my own page for the Blogroll. It used to be a "real" page in the CMS, which bothered me because it stood out a bit next to the blog posts. I then scrapped it and now maintain my Blogroll directly in the blog settings.

Now that I'm more familiar with Kirby, I would implement things differently than before. Additionally, Kirby has received numerous new features since then, so I revisited the Blogroll topic. I now have a dedicated page that delivers my Blogroll without the need for that page to exist in the CMS. I explain how I did it over on the Hub.

Definitely check out Matthias' newsletter, and maybe you'll decide to add a Blogroll to your own blog!