Drupal

Let people know what poker blogs you read every day by creating your own widget. It also allows you to collect all of your own poker blog headlines if you use several blogging platforms. This is a simple trick for those who write a few poker blogs at a time and would like to add a simple widget to their sites with the latest headlines. The widget can be created by using Google Reader service.

Such a widget can be added to Blogspot or any other blogging service which allows custom HTML/script codes. Some of Wordpress-based blog services do not support it, so you may not be able to add the widget. The Wordpress.com platform is one of them.

There are two kinds of widgets:

1. Displaying all posts from all of the blogs that one has subscribed to in a set category (you can add even 1 blog subscription per category if you want). For example, I have subscribed to PokerStars Blog, Tao of Poker and all the my.PokerNews.com blogs. I set a category (it is called a label or a folder in Google Reader) and called it “Best Poker Blogs”. The widget will display posts from these 3 blogs.
2. Displaying only selected posts from subscribed blogs. The widget displays only the posts that one wants to share by marking them at the bottom of each post.

If you write 3 poker blogs on different blogging engines, just make sure you have subscribed to their feeds and create a widget displaying only their latest headlines. I would like to show you how to do this step by step.

All posts widget setup

Step 1. Make sure you have a folder where you could add your blogs. You may create it when you have subscribed to the feed.

Step 2. Set the privacy option from Private to Public in the “Settings>Folders and Tags” section. This option creates a public page for your feed which can be sent by email as well as shared via the social networks.
 
Step 3. Generate the widget by clicking the “add a clip to your site” link. Once you click it, the splash screen appears with the widget settings.

Step 4. Customize your widget. You can rename it, choose the color scheme from the drop down list, set the number of headlines, set whether to show the source under each headline or not (useful when you have more than one blog in your widget).

Step 5. Copy the code and add it to your website. If you use the Blogger service, just click the button “Add to Blogger” and it will automatically redirect you to your Blogger Dashboard.

Sounds difficult? Read the instructions again ;)

Selective posts widget setup

This option is used when you are subscribed to lots of blogs and want to share only their most interesting posts.

Step 1. When you see an interesting post and want to share it in your public page (widget only takes the headlines from the public pages) click the “Share” icon at the bottom of the post. If you do not want it to be displayed in the public page anymore, just find that post and click “Unshare” icon at the bottom.

 
Step 2. Generate the widget in the “Settings>Folders and Tags” list by clicking the “add a clip to your site” on the right of “Your shared Items” folder.
 
Step 3. Do the same as explained in step 3 of the previous section.

Step 4. Customize your widget as it was mentioned previously.

Step 5. Copy the code and add it to your website.

Good luck!

Please remember that you should not edit the code yourself. Your settings are saved there and a unique ID is added to the code, which can be edited only through the widget settings.

Hopefully you will find this poker widget useful, because it allows you to spread your word to masses and recommend some good articles to your readers.