As you can most likely see, I have changed my sidebar. There is a new widget that stands out in it called TopLinks. It shows where I have been linking over the course of this blog and it sorts them by the number of times I have linked to them. I really enjoy the idea of this plugin as it shows you, my readers, where I get most of my news from, and it also gives kudos to those that I link to often.

FriendsRoll allows you to display a blogroll of sites requested by your readers. I could see this being used for spam purposes, but also as a great way to build a strong resource list. Again, another great way to give kudos to certain people as well. I’d much rather you all go check out my friends blogs like Tom’s blog, Leroux.ca, than one of my competitors.

I recently talked a bit about them on Blogging Pro, and I have to admit that there is a bit of a personal connection to these plugins. They are developed by 76design, a company in Ottawa that I almost ended up working for. I have huge respect for them, and I am super happy to see them applying their skills and talents to creating some useful and fun WordPress plugins.

The great thing is that they are still developing these plugins, which means if you have any questions, issues, concerns, you can let them know and they will be looked after. So add TopLinks and FriendsRoll to your blogs and let them know what you think.

Thanks to Joseph Thornley for talking about it on his blog, ProPr.

Originally posted on March 19, 2008 @ 2:08 pm