The Blogroll is Still Alive!

Recent appearances to the contrary, the Moderate Christian Blogroll and Aggregator are still active.  I have been extremely busy with my business at Energion Publications, and so have gotten behind.  I’m in the process of updating the backlog of new members and also deleting some inactive blogs.  I’m about 1/3 of the way through that process.

I’ll post a notice here when I have added all the new blogs and updated the list.

Please note that I will no longer be maintaining the Blogrolling version of the list.  You can find all the ways to link and get RSS feeds at ModerateChristian.com or on this blog.

Christian Carnival Plug

You can read about the Christian Carnival this week here.

Two ideas:

1. Participate in the carnival, publicize your blog and your best writing, and become acquainted with how it works
2. When you’re comfortable, volunteer to host.

New Blogroll Members and Blogrolling Problem

First, apparently Blogrolling has been having troubles for some time so that rolls cannot be updated.  They expect to have this fixed soon.  I didn’t notice because I was so far behind in updating the roll.

Second, I have just updated the roll with submissions going all the way back to October last year, so if you have been waiting forever and ever, you may find yourself on the roll now.

The blogrolling blogrolls (sounds good, no?) still work, but I can’t add the new members yet.  The other means of including the blogroll on your site still work, including:

Display all sites in random order:  http://www.moderatechristian.com/xml.php (The default is to display site names and do so in random order.)

Display sites with most recently updated first:  http://www.moderatechristian.com/xml.php?order=recent (order can also = alpha, but that is not particularly useful as there are more than 50 sites on the blogroll.)

Limit the number of posts (maximum and default are both 50):  http://www.moderatechristian.com/xml.php?order=recent&max=10

List posts rather than sites:  http://www.moderatechristian.com/xml.php?type=posts.

In addition, you can subscribe to the RSS feed from my Google Reader Moderate Christian Blogroll folder.  I’m not at all sure why you would prefer to do it that way, but you can.

Blogs Added

I have added a number of new blogs to the roll.  If you have e-mailed me or filled out the form and have not been added, there are two possible reasons:

1. I didn’t get the e-mail or somehow missed/deleted it
2. Your blog did not appear to meet the standards.

It’s easy for me to miss something on a blog that doesn’t relate to religion, so if your blog is not on the roll, e-mail me again.  I’m looking for an explicity statement that the blog is Christian and also some sort of evidence that it supports moderation in one form or another.

The point is not to be exclusive, but rather to keep all the blogs on this roll on one theme.  There are many blogs that I read regularly and enjoy that would not qualify.

Here are the blogs I have just added:

• The Book of Shadow
• Praise the Lord Jesus Christ – Believer Blogs
• The Englewood Review of Books
• Chemistry Tutorial
  Though it is not required that a blog discuss religion, there are, in fact, religious posts on this one!
• The Kingdom’s Edge
• Reluctant Catholic

I will try to get back to a few “four posts” entries in the near future!

Posts RSS Feed Down on the Blogroll

The RSS feed for posts was down overnight due to a stupid error I made in coding an upgrade.  It’s fixed now.

The upgrade will allow me to exclude feeds individually from either the blogroll or the aggregator at your request.  Right now nobody is excluded, and I don’t plan to exclude anyone unless they would prefer not to be included in one or the other.

Since the Aggregator (moderatechristian.com) includes post summaries, some people might prefer not to have their content included.  Also, in the near future the same upgrade will allow me to tag posts by category (politics, religion, etc.) and topic (Bible, doctrine, U.S., whatever), with tabs on the aggregator allowing users to review incoming posts in that way.  I would probably include at least one amazon.com or google ad block to help me pay for all this, and I want to offer people the option of being in the blogroll but not in that topical listing.

I think such a list should help make the aggregator more useful, however, so while I’m making the option available, I’m hoping most people will choose to stick with it.  Note that I never include the whole post, unless the whole post and summary are identical, as shown in your RSS feed.

Welcome New Members

I have added three new sites to the Moderate Christian Blogroll:

Echo of Hope

Smore for Women

I will not be Afraid

Please welcome them!

4 Posts on Photography

What are these 4 Posts entries? As many days of the week as I have time I look through the RSS feed for the Moderate Christian Blogroll/Aggregator and select four posts on a single topic. Usually the topic is suggested because a post has caught my eye. To call my attention to a post you have written e-mail pubs@energion.com and suggest your post and a general topic heading. Your blog must be a member of the Moderate Christian blogroll, and in general I prefer to include posts within the last week only.

These posts all display some good (in my opinion, of course!) photography.  These require little comment, and that’s what they’ll get!

Heaven’s Highway, God’s Fireworks Display

God’s Fireworks Display

Joel Gillespie

I Was Enjoying My Nap

Pen of the Wayfarer

For spiritual nature, like bodily nature, will be served . . .

Quiet Paths

Wild Iris on Second Beach

Welcome New Sites – Finally!

It has been some time and many of these folks have waited a long time, but please welcome the following new members to the Moderate Christian Blogroll:

The Rabid Moderate

T.R.U.T.H. in Ministry

Reflections

Moral Science Club

The Paranormal Pastor

Personal Finance Nut

Reason for the Hope

Parables of a Prodigal World

If you have e-mailed me requested that you be added and you are not on this list, please e-mail me.  I apologize to all for the long delay in some cases.  The problems with the database seem to be behind me and I hope to keep up better in the future.

Please refer to this post for options for displaying all or part of the blogroll.

New RSS Feeds and Blogroll Options

I have revived and completed some software I originally started when I created the Moderate Christian Blogroll, and thus have new and improved options for displaying the blogroll, including a site list via RSS that will display properly in WordPress.com sidebars.

You will have noticed (I hope), the posts about problems with the current feed. It has been leaving out a number of sites, including almost all blogspot blogs. The new feed seems to be including them properly, so it’s time to start using it.

I will leave the old RSS feed active for a couple of weeks so this information can percolate, but you should change to the new feed, as many sites are not included in the old feed. Here are your options:

Display all sites in random order:  http://www.moderatechristian.com/xml.php (The default is to display site names and do so in random order.)

Display sites with most recently updated first:  http://www.moderatechristian.com/xml.php?order=recent (order can also = alpha, but that is not particularly useful as there are more than 50 sites on the blogroll.)

Limit the number of posts (maximum and default are both 50):  http://www.moderatechristian.com/xml.php?order=recent&max=10

List posts rather than sites:  http://www.moderatechristian.com/xml.php?type=posts.

Note that you can limit the number of posts in the same way.  If you are going to display it on your sidebar, most widgets are going to limit the number, and you’ll probably want to do so anyhow.

All options that worked through ncs.hneufeld.com should no longer be used.

You can still use the blogrolling:

Javascript: <script language=”javascript” type=”text/javascript” src=”http://rpc.blogrolling.com/display.php?r=0705fa51be540e1725e02706416a59df”></script>

RSS:  http://rpc.blogrolling.com/rss.php?r=0705fa51be540e1725e02706416a59df

Remember that the requirements for inclusion in the blogroll are that you include at least 5 blogroll members on your blogroll, or use one of the methods above to display that many.  The links should be no more than one click from your homepage, thus it is acceptable to simply link to http://www.moderatechristian.com which displays the aggregator.  It is more helpful to your fellow bloggers, however, to include a few more links than that.

If you don’t want to be included in the aggregator, which displays extracts, please e-mail me at pubs@energion.com.  I will be glad to exclude your site from the aggregator while leaving it in the blogroll.  You can also choose to be in the aggregator only.

Also, please report any errors to me.  This software is in testing, and is only implemented here.  I’m going to use it one other place which will also help, but I need error reports if I’m going to work out the remaining kinks.

Thanks!

Continuing to Work on RSS

Just so nobody thinks I died or decided this wasn’t important, some calls have kept me from completing the work, and I also found that there was some cleaning up to do on the blogroll. I will have that done soon, and will then add all the new members.

I believe the new RSS feed options will be more useful than the ones they’re replacing as well.

I have also found some more “4 Posts” ideas as I worked, so hopefully I will post one or two of those tomorrow, including 4 Posts Involving Photography and 4 Posts on N. T. Wright.