pantsonhead

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 I don’t like how they are often just a static list, commonly out of date, that you learn to ignore after the first 4 page views.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.
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.
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.

RSS Blogroll

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

Crazy Girl

This WordPress Widget allows you to display the recent posts of your blogroll links via RSS Feeds as a sidebar widget. 
The Plugin works without Javascript and without AJAX. It uses the WordPress standard links database and honors the 
visible and target settings as defined for each link (private links are not shown, links are displayed in the same or 
in a new window as specified). The Plugin is easy to install, the Widget is simple to use and highly customizable. 
You can simply switch on / off, select or type in the various configurations and settings.
You can configure this Widget in the WordPress Appearance Widgets SubPanel as follows:
<ul>
<li>add an own title to the sidebar widget</li>
<li>define how many items you want to display </li>
<li>choose the link category of the items (all links or one of your link categories)</li>
<li>select the item order (link name ascending, link name descending, link id ascending, link id descending, random order)</li>
<li>show the images entered to the respective links or let the plugin generate website thumbnails (via m-software.de) – NOT RECOMMENDED, as this service does not work properly anymore!</li>
<li>define the image size</li>
<li>show blogroll links</li>
<li>add the ‘rel=nofollow’ attribute to the blogroll links</li>
<li>define how many feed post links you want to display</li>
<li>choose if you want to shorten the feed post link text and define the length in characters</li>
<li>add the ‘rel=nofollow’ attribute to the feed post links</li>
<li>show feed post excerpts</li>
<li>define how many characters of the feed post excerpt you want to display</li>
</ul>
Before using the Blogroll Widget with RSS Feeds make sure, that you have entered the right RSS Addresses to your links in the Links 
Subpanel. Otherwise this Plugin will not work correctly. No item is shown when no RSS Address is entered! With this you 
have a further possibility to configure the Widget output. When you do not enter a RSS Address to a link, it will not be 
displayed in the Widget.
Alternative to the WordPress Appearance Widgets SubPanel you can add and configure the Blogroll Widget with RSS Feeds directly 
in your theme file (e.g. sidebar.php). For details please see the installation tab.
Blogroll Widget with RSS Feeds requires WordPress Version 2.8 or higher
<h4>Available Languages</h4>
<ul>
<li>German</li>
<li>English</li>
<li>Italian – Thanks to talksina</li>
<li>French – Thanks to <a href="http://maitremo.fr/" title="Maître Mô" rel="nofollow ugc">Maître Mô</a></li>
<li>Belorussian – Thanks to <a href="http://pc.de/" title="Marcis G." rel="nofollow ugc">Marcis G.</a></li>
<li>Bulgarian – Thanks to <a href="http://webhostinggeeks.com/" title="Web Geek" rel="nofollow ugc">Web Geek</a></li>
</ul>

RSS Blogroll vs Blogroll Widget with RSS Feeds