Top Commentators Widget for Blogger: Update

Thursday, March 13, 2008

I wrote a detailed step-by-step instruction to install the top commentators widget for Blogger/ Blogspot about two months ago. The widget was based on a feed from Yahoo Pipes. Since then, this remains as the most popular post from my blog. It has also attracted the most number of comments, positive and negative, and many trackbacks. In fact, the pipe did work very well except for some minor bugs. In this post, I have attempted to address some of the issues, thanks to some excellent work from other fellow bloggers.

Problem #1
The RSS feed did not work properly, as Blogger’s default feed widget tried to sort the feed according to the date. This has disrupted the already sorted version from Pipes and we had duplicate names and names that are not properly sorted. This has been pointed out by CyberPenguin in his/ her post The Top Commenters Feature Glitch Needs A Fix! Will You Be The One To Save The Day?!.

The Solution
This problem has now been resolved and I should thank two bloggers who came out with similar solution to this problem. These bloggers have come out with a Javascript code, which requires just one-step for you to install the top commentators widget in Blogger. Here are the links to the posts:


Problem #2
Some readers have asked about how to remove their own comments from the top commentators list. In fact, my original pipe did have a filter to remove the author’s name from the list. But, strangely, when you clone the pipe this filter is not available any more.

The Solution
I thought of writing a post on this, but BloggerBuster is quick enough to complete this in his blog. So, I will redirect you to his post to learn how to remove your name from the list:


Problem #3
Many readers have highlighted that the top commentators list is just linking back to the last comment made by that particular person. They felt that it would be nice if we could link to the commentator’s blog/ website instead.

The Solution
Unfortunately, there is no solution to this problem yet. Blogger does not provide the commentator’s blog/ web site URL in the RSS feed and hence we could not resolve this problem. But, let us see if Google will notice this and give us a way to work around. Until then, just be content with the names.

Finally, thanks to all the bloggers who made the effort to feedback, comment and improve the top commentators widget. Please subscribe to my feed if you like this post

16 comments:

ZiaBoby May 27, 2008 at 1:45 AM  

Is it possible removing more than one name?
I change my nickname twice and there are anonymous comments whicht I don't want to show.

ZiaBoby May 27, 2008 at 3:27 AM  

I find a solution with BloggerBuster widget. I have used the filter
for anonymous. Thanks you however for this post.

Unknown October 7, 2008 at 9:05 AM  

Last night I was having trouble getting blogger to show the html code as a widget. This morning I woke up and noticed that I was placing the html code in the wrong window. Thanks to your site I now have my top commentators widget.

Manick October 7, 2008 at 7:08 PM  

Hi CJ,

I am glad to know that it works for you. Thanks for your comments.

Cyberpenguin October 10, 2008 at 5:45 PM  

Yay, thanks so much for posting this update!
-Cyberpenguin

Manick October 10, 2008 at 10:11 PM  

Hi Cyberpenguin,

You are welcome. Thanks for visiting my blog again.

AMRUTA BLOGspot January 28, 2009 at 10:20 PM  

nice blog .we really thankful for having such nice information about blog.step by step instruction is really helpful for top commentator for blogger by using yahoo pipe thanks for information

Manick January 29, 2009 at 1:01 AM  

Hi Amruta,

Thanks. I am glad that this blog is helpful to you.

Anonymous February 20, 2009 at 8:23 PM  

Can you make it so this widget show the Top Commentators from ALL posts on a blog and not only X amount of recent ones? My blog has over 2400 posts but the widet doesnt research that far back. Thanks let me know!

Manick February 23, 2009 at 8:43 PM  

Hi Anonymous,

Thanks for your feedback. The problem actually lies with Blogger. They allow us to retrieve only the recent comments (I think about 5000?). If you have huge amount of posts and lot of comments, then you may not be able to retrieve all the data for this widget. Thanks.

sriram December 17, 2009 at 5:12 AM  

thanks for this valuable information.

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Well well, I better come up with something good for my future guest post

Ann November 22, 2011 at 1:19 AM  

Thanks for letting me know about other good stuff!

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Share Tips July 1, 2012 at 10:14 PM  

The Top Commentators from ALL posts on a blog and not only X amount of recent once.

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