The standard Blogger recent comments widget doesn't include the title of the original post which makes it fairly rubbish. There are a number of alternatives out there, but few address this key deficiency. One which does is one I found at Review of Web. The source code is included there so that you can embed it into a Javascript widget in your sidebar. Getting it working takes no more than a couple of minutes. Great, just what I wanted!
Type the address of you blog into the box, for instance http://how2zilla.blogspot.com for this blog, Obviously use the URL of your own blog. When you click on Next, you'll probably then get a screen like this:
Just click Next which will take you to this screen.
This is the important one so make sure it's exactly what you want. I prefer my Feed Title to be the same as the Title of my blog so I made sure Blogger had a capital letter. I also shortened the name of the feed (so it will be http://feeds2.feedburner.com/How2zilla). It doesn't really matter as most people will subscribe by clicking on a link to the feed rather than typing in the address, but a sharp address will help people to see what they are subscribing too and make it easier for you when you do need to type it in to various configuration options.
Click on Next and you are done - so long as the address you have chosen doesn't already exist: if it us already in use you'll be asked to try again. Click Next a second time to a screen headed "Get More Gusto From Your Feed Traffic Statistics." Personally I prefer to leave these options unselected. Firstly I want to leave links pointing directly to my blog for SEO purposes, but also unless you have a high volume of readers the more detailed statistics are neither very relevant nor useful.
Click Next one final time.
The feed is now set up and ready. In the next article I'll look at how to get people to use it rather than the default Blogger feed.
© Kate Phizackerley 2009