KJ Coop

<p>This plugin will display a given number of random blogroll categories to show.<br />
It will show all the links in those categories.</p>
<h3>Usage</h3>
<p>Unless you’ve changed some defaults, your blogroll is most likely displayed by<br />
the following line of code in wp-content/themes/[your theme]/sidebar.php:
    </p>
<p>The simplest way to display a random category is just by replacing that line<br />
with a call to blogroll_random_category:
    </p>
<p>If you want to include a link to the whole blogroll, you can create a page in<br />
wordpress using the links template. Note the permalink. If you’ve already got a<br />
list of your pages in the sidebar, you’re in business. Otherwise you can add one<br />
with the following line of code:<br />
    <a href="[your permalink]" rel="nofollow ugc">See complete blogroll</a></p>
<p>If your blogroll is not set to be categorized, or if there is only one category,<br />
it will return the whole thing untouched.</p>
<h3>Advanced</h3>
<h3>Showing multiple categories</h3>
<p>If you want multiple categories returned, you can send the function that number.<br />
For example:</p>
<p>will return 5 randomized categories. If you only have 4 categories, it will<br />
return all of them in a random order.</p>
<h3>Retaining arguments sent to wp_list_bookmarks</h3>
<p>If you’re sending arguments to wp_list_bookmarks, you can send those to<br />
blogroll_random_category and it will pass them along to wp_list bookmarks. In<br />
this example, we’re showing all categories except #23:
    </p>
<p>The change below will show five random categories, none of which will be #23. If<br />
you only have four categories, this will return the three that are not #23:
    </p>
<h3>To show one category all the time and the rest randomize the rest</h3>
<p>In the sidebar you can explicitly call that category. When only one category is<br />
selected, this plugin knows to return it as it is. Any subsequent calls to<br />
blogroll_random_category ought to be instructed to exclude it in order to avoid<br />
the possibility that it happens to be randomly selected:</p>
<pre><code><?php wp_list_bookmarks('category=23'); ?>
<?php blogroll_random_category(5, 'exclude_category=23'); ?><h3>1.0</h3>* The first version.<h3>1.5</h3>* Whereas this plugin previously altered the behavior of wp_list_bookmarks in a
</code></pre>
<p>way that made it impossible to see the whole blogroll. Now it uses a separate<br />
  function call so that in some instances you can see random categories, but in<br />
  others you can see the whole blogroll.<br />
* Now possible to return multiple random categories without separate function<br />
  calls, thus eliminiating the possibility that two of the random categories<br />
  will be the same.</p>
<h3>1.5.1</h3>
<ul>
<li>The leading closing li tag was not actually getting trimmed off due to<br />
bad copying and pasting. That has been resolved.</li>
</ul>
<h3>A personal request</h3>
<p>If you use/enjoy this plugin, I’d love to hear from you. You’re under no<br />
obligation, but I’d enjoy knowing that somebody out there is enjoying my work.<br />
Promptly returning e-mail is not my strong suit, so you may never get the<br />
courtesy of a reply, but you can rest assured that I appreciated your effort.</p>
<p>I can be reached at kj@kjcoop.com.</p>


Random Blogroll Category

This plug in will select one or more random blogroll categories to show.

pantsonhead

<p>I don’t really like Blogrolls, I think they’re often not much more than glorified link dumps. I don’t like how they give you nothing more than the Blog title, and unless that title really grabs your attention, you’re never gonna click it. I don’t like how they are often just a static list, commonly out of date, that you learn to ignore after the first 4 page views. In their current format, they just appear to be a great waste of space.</p>
<p>This is why I decided to create the RSS Blogroll plugin. RSS Blogroll allows you to link to your favourite blogs via the latest items from their RSS/Atom feed. Article titles are much more attention grabbing and will deliver much higher quality traffic. We all hate clicking through to abandoned blogs – displaying article publication dates also lets readers know these are up to date and active sites.</p>
<p>Many of us want to direct some of our traffic to related sites. RSS Blogroll will create deeplinks to the target sites, which are much more useful for SEO than homepage links. Overall it’s a win-win situation with a better browsing experience for users and the linked sites getting more visitors who are actually interested in their content.</p>


RSS Blogroll

Sidebar widget that links to recent entries from RSS/Atom feeds.

Random Blogroll Category vs RSS Blogroll