Do you remember the scene of Web Apocalypse Not Now where Lieutenant Colonel Bill Feedmore boasts, “I love the smell of an RSS feed in the morning!” I hope not. But tinkering with RSS n…
For quite a while I’ve had an upcoming events widget in the sidebar of my website. It was a simple HTML widget that was maintained by hand, but I’d been getting tired of updating it. To keep things a bit more DRY (aka don’t repeat yourself), I’m using the JetPack Upcoming Events widget now that pulls in iCal feed data from a special shared Google Calendar where I put my public events. This way I can put things in my calendar and my website will automatically update within an hour or two. Hooray for the little wins.
Depending on where you’re syndicating to and why, one could consider leaving some of these default sidebar widgets in their installation. Some folks, Aaron Davis comes quickly to mind, add titles (sometimes with emoji) to their notes, replies, RSVPs, likes, favorites, etc., which often are defined as posts which technically don’t need titles. Doing this certainly takes some extra time and work (or coding skill if you’re automating it), but can have the benefit of populating not only those widgets, but also adding a somewhat logical title to RSS feed readers and other tools which have been trained over 20 years to want titles on everything.
Recent Posts and Comments widget displays on Aaron Davis’ website
If you have the courage, certainly go title-less as it’s a whole lot easier, but there are other options if you like those sorts of touches.
New Jetpack release including site monetization tools, ad-free video hosting, new shortcodes and sidebar widgets.
How 1995! JetPack v4.5 now has a widget for “blog stats: a simple stat counter to display page views on the front end of your site.”
Welcome to Jetpack 4.5, available now for upgrade or installation. We’re starting the year in style with some very exciting additions and improvements that we can’t wait for you to try. This release includes:
