The Recent Comments Widget for Blogger doesn’t work with private blogs. While trying to find a work-around with the widget’s script, I came up instead with a way to make a new widget that can display Recent Comments on private blogs. It will display excerpts of the last five comments, with the item dates and the names of the sources/authors.
See screenshot on the left.
Instructions
Here’s how you can make a Recent Comments widget for your private Blogger blog:
1. Login to your Blogger Dashboard
2. go to your blog’s Layout, and click Add a Page Element
3. add a Feed (click “add to blog” under the page element Feed)
4. Configure Feed:
A. Enter your blog’s feed URL in the box. Use the URL below..
Just replace the text indicated in blue with your own blog address.http://YourAwesomeBlog.blogspot.com/feeds/comments/default?alt=rss
or
http://www.YourAwesomeBlog.com/feeds/comments/default?alt=rss
(for self-hosted blogs)B. Click Continue.
C. Change the Title to “Recent Comments” or whatever you prefer to call it. To show the item dates and names of the authors, check the appropriate boxes.
5. SAVE CHANGES. That’s it!
As this widget is a Blogger’s feed widget, titles of posts that were commented on can’t be displayed, unlike the Recent Comments widget. But still, it is a good alternative.
Update: If you get INVALID FEED URL, just try repeating step #4 until the site’s comments feed is finally fetched. Sometimes the Blogger feed widget has a hard time fetching a feed url.
Hi Jen Jen,
I’d be glad to be of help.
It seems that Google has been undergoing (or undergone) some major recalibrations or changes with their PageRanking system since the last quarter of 2007. And many websites were affected by this with their PR down by 1 or backed to zero. Mine, too. Some of my websites suffered the same fate. Google’s PageRanking system has become unpredictable — that’s what it seems, at least for now.
Unfortunately, your blog might have been a victim, too. I’ve just checked your blog’s backlinks and I found out it has sufficient incoming links that it would have gotten a PR 3 or 2.
I recommend you continue exchanging links with other bloggers. This will help your blog get some PR on the next update. The last two PR update was done last December 2007 and February 2008 (usually, end of the month). Google could be doing the PR update every 2 months now. If this is going to be the case, the next update would be by the end of April 2008.
Another thing, apparently Google have penalized blogs with PPP posts or ads (Pay Per Post). If you’re doing review posts with PPP, do not put any PPP or sponsored tags in your posts. And do not place any PPP ad, banner or any PPP disclosure on your blog.
I highly recommend that you sign up with http://www.SporsoredReviews.com instead.
Yep, I also get the “Invalid feed URL” error and have tried the URL multiple times over mulitple days….
Hi Mad Tom,
Thanks for the information. It is a relieve to know that it is a glitch in the google Pageranking system and not because I have not been doing the right things. I am suspecting that the reason I am not getting enough assignments for payed review is because of the PR = 0.
So, I will continue with what I am doing now and enjoy myself^_^
Thanks!
hey! very informative post. Anyway, you’ve been tagged.
excellant information. thank you
very cool, I’ll try this.
No way, it doesn’t work! I tryed and retryed…
It really works? U could show us your html so we could copy it with the name of our private blog…
Filo, Ali, Mal, (how’d it ever go for you, Dissent?). I don’t see how the URL can work; see how a test goes when you try either the “…default?alt=rss” code or the plain http://YourAwesomeBlog.blogspot.com URL in something like Google Reader, it flashes back in a bright red block: “No feed available for…….” So it appears there is nothing for Blogger to FETCH in the first place, when the blog is private. How did this widget ever work for anyone with a private blog?? Is there a free-standing HTML hack? Step #4 in the Add Feed Page Element instructions of this post has not worked even after 30, 60 attempts. Help? I want to believe it is possible….
Hi there, just dropping by to say Hello,
I found your blog from the Big Bang Master List.
Have a nice day.
Very usefull tips..Btw..did you know that now we can full customize the blogspot style?..I had proven it..just visit to mine and prove it. Do you agree?
thank you, i’ve been searching for 2 days, at last i hit the jack pot, this is actually appearing on my site – yay!!!