Sideblog WordPress Plugin

Everytime I browse through the internet world, I found many fascinating stuffs which links I hate to miss. Hence I save them mostly in del.icio.us. As time goes by, I feel having saved many links in a third party service–instead of in your primary blog–is a bit ineffective and a waste of time. Come to think of it, I need a plugin to enable me to save links I found on the internet in the form of a blog post but doesn’t appear in the main page blog posts, the links should come up only in the sidebar.

After googling, I found a nice plugin called Sideblog. And since two days ago, you’ve seen SIDENOTES in the right sidebar which is a sort of miniblog (also called Asides, Sideblog, Sidenotes) which perform like an online bookmark such as del.icio.us etc. Only it’s a lot better as it’s integrated well within your own blog.

How to install

First, download the plugin from here and unzip it.

Second, if you’ve activated your sidebar widget, follow this instruction:

1. Upload sideblog.php to the /wp-content/plugins directory
2. Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress
3. Create your asides category (usually, ‘asides’) if you haven’t created on yet
4. Go to ‘Setting’ menu then to ‘Sideblog’ submenu
5. From the list of categories, select the one you just created above and choose the number of entries to display
6. Click on ‘Update Sideblog Options’ button
7. Go to ‘Design’ menu, then to ‘Widget’ or just ‘Widgets’ for WP 2.2 and greater.
8. Drag and drop the Sideblog widget (‘Sideblog 1) to your sidebar container.
9. Click on the icon and give it a title and select a category.
10. Save your changes.
11. Create a post and put it in your asides category

If you happen to like non-widget sidebar (anyone?), follow these steps, skip it if you use widget:

1. Upload sideblog.php to the /wp-content/plugins directory
2. Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress
3. Create your asides category (usually, ‘asides’) if you haven’t created on yet
4. Open your themes’ sidebar.php file if you have one and add <?php sideblog('asides'); ?>
5. Create a post and put it in your asides category

 

How to Setting

There are several options on how you want this Sideblog to appear. I prefer only the title url link which will appear in the sidebar. So this is what I’d do:

1. Once the installation is done, I go to Setting -> Sideblog
2. On the “Display Format” menu, I put this code:

<li>%title_url% </li>
3. Click "Update Sideblog Options" (See picture 1 below)

Picture 1: Only URL Title shows in Sideblog, the content will show after you click the title link.

So, now when I am not in the mood to write a long post or article, I write in the Sidenotes or Sideblog with a link or two to other blogs or websites. Likewise, whenever I found a nice link which I don’t have time to read now yet it’s too important to miss or just to share the link with readers, I save it in the Sidenotes. There are times when I write a long article (more than three paragraph) but I just don’t want it to appear in the frontpage for a reason or two, so I use this method.

You may also comment in the sidenote as well, since the comment box is open.