Previously I had a blogroll category called “Friends” with just 1 entry, Saman Sadeghi. Don’t let that just 1 entry fool you, I have at least 3 times that many friends

Actually, I just don’t have that many friends that blog, so instead of having that category, I decided to remove it and add Saman to where he belongs, my honorary link list. I feel that if you have a category called “Friends” and it only has 1 entry, this can fall into the “scare factor”. You know the whole this guy only has 1 friend, must not be interesting! So since that is not the case, I decided to pitch that category, I highly suggest you look that way at your site all the time, look for anything that may scare away a possible future reader.

The simple fact is I would not be blogging today if it were not for Saman. His blog captivated me so much and introduced me to this great blogging community. I do not mention Saman’s site all the time just because of how great a friend he is, its more than that, his blogging site truly does have nonstop great content. Whether it be from him, his fellow authors, or the community that has developed there, it is a very entertaining blog.

So Saman, I knight’th thou’th Sir Saman “-athon in a thong” Sadeghi of Colorado. Feel free to use the title wherever you go, even England!

My Honorary Blogroll is just that, a thing of honor. It is the way I can honor my readers and community with the greatest thing possible, a permanent linkback. I am constantly keeping my eye on all comments, actions, and linkback posts that involve this site. If I feel truly honored, than I return the favor by honoring you! Thank you all so much for stopping by!

All members of my honorary blogroll get 20% off their purchases at a store that does not exist! 15% off all parking charges at a parking lot that does not exist and to top it all off, buy 1 get 1 free on all shoe items if I were to sell shoes, but I don’t.

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It’s already been mentioned on a couple other sites, I really need to mention it on my own
One thing you may notice on my site reviews is I may call out the fact that there is no way to navigate forward and backward through your single posts. To me, when reading blogs, I really appreciate a way to navigate through your posts without having to go back to the main page, scroll down, and than continue reading the next. To me, it just has to be easy to get to the previous or the next post. This especially makes it easy on your active Commentators to travel from post to post and keep actively commenting on your site.

I noticed that there are a good amount of great looking themes being produced these days that look great, but do not include these links. I know that a lot of bloggers out there are not necessarily coders, and may not no exactly how to add nav links in the posts easily. So I decided to create a plugin to make it very easy to do. If you are currently using a theme that does not include nav links, I highly suggest you add some. My plugin makes it very easy to do! You can even include them multiple times if you wish! If you look at my site, currently I have the links at the very beginning and at the very end (when you are in the single post view of course). Both of these link sets are generated from my newly created plugin.

This plugin also works great on themes that perhaps do have nav links coded into it, but maybe just once and you would like to have more.

My WordPress Plugin is located at this page:
Bob’s Simplistic Navigation

If you use the plugin and like it. I would love you to add a mention about it in a post with a linkback to the plugin’s page.

Thanks for stopping by today and please let me know below if you have any questions or comments about it at all. Have a great day!

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I’m so new to WordPress that I had no idea that it threw in the NOFOLLOW tag in all the comments by default. Its funny, I have read many articles about how bad this is, but never even checked my own blog site. I just never thought that would be something WordPress would have coded into by default with the Akismet plugin available by default. Its funny that they do that isn’t it? Here is a great tool to keep out SPAM - but just in case - here is the NOFOLLOW tag for that .0001% that gets through. The community on your site is far more important that that very obscure .0001%. So I have removed the NOFOLLOW tag and I would very much like to credit Saman’s post titled “Say Goodbye To The NOFOLLOW Tag At Samanathon.com!” and/or “I Follow List” for pointing this out to me.

If you are interested in getting rid of the NOFOLLOW tag, be sure to check out Saman’s post about him removing it from his site. It will give you the information and links that can make it happen for your site. Blogging is about community and sharing what you build. If you have not already removed the NOFOLLOW tag, you really should.

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I liked this plugin so much I just had to fix it and use it!
Brian’s Threaded Comments is such a powerful tool to be used on a bloggers site. It really encourages interaction between yourself and all of your Commentators as well. In fact, on Saman’s site I was able to get into a great Haiku/Zen fight with Natron that was easily readable thanks to this plugin. I have seen the successes of it many times over on many blogs including the great Saman Sadeghi and the great John Chow.

So what on earth is my problem with this plugin? Well its really very simple, I’m a “tabber”. When I fill out a web form, I use my tab button to tab from one field to the next. I fill out my name, press tab, fill out my email, press tab, etc…. Well the problem with Brian’s Threaded Comments is once you hit tab after the Comment box, you are sent to the top of the page rather than being sent to the Add Comment Button.

Example:

The Problem:
Is actually very simple. When putting the code and output together, Brian assigned a tabindex to the four text input fields, but not the button. So your browser being the good little trooper it is follows in the tab order given, then resets back to its default for the remaining items. Your page itself is typically the first tab, when you override that, it waits its turn and than takes the soonest opportunity. Thus, that is why right now when you tab from comments hoping to be sent to the button, you get sent to the top of the page.

The Solution:
Or should I call it “a solution”. There are many ways to fix this, but perhaps the easiest way is to just assign a tabindex to the button. What you want to do is find the following line in your custom comments.php code:

<input onclick="if(typeof(onAddComment) == 'function') { onAddComment(); } else { alert('ERROR:
It looks like the website administrator hasn\'t activated the Brians Threaded Comments plugin from the plugin page'); };" name="addcommentbutton" type="button" id="addcommentbutton" value="Add comment" tabindex="5" />

Due to limited space, the above wrapped, but this will be just one line in the code (unless your coded editor wraps text). The location of it will most likely be different for everyone as we have all added custom code for avatars and such, but for me, this was at line 203. So my guess is it is in that general neighborhood for you too. As you can see by the code example above, I just added tabindex="5" at the very end. That fixed the tab order issue and now all the “tabbers” like me will love posting on your site again!

*Update - Turns out I was not the only one who was annoyed by this error. Ryan J Parker had also written a post about it too, it can be found here: Fixing the Tab Index with Brian’s Threaded Comments

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Saman really went above and beyond. Earlier today I noticed that he wrote a blog introducing my blog to his community! Saman has interesting perspectives and great technical writing abilities. Because of this, his community has grown quite a bit. So for him to introduce me to that community is a huge deal and I am very very appreciative!

With more visitors coming to this start-up site comes some responsibilities. First off, I have noticed, when you comment on a site, whether you are doing it for promotion of your own blog site or you truly are passionate about the given subject, you still like to get “credit” for these comments. So I have added the Top Commentators” plugin to my site. Currently, I have it set to tally on a monthly basis and show the top 10. I have actually upped it to the “all” setting now. I’m looking at it from the non-scare factor. If readers see such low numbers, they may be scared away. So until my site starts to see a lot more participating traffic, I’m going to leave it at “all”. If my traffic and comments show a great increase, than I will definitely have it cycle more than that in the future as my friend Saman does.

I have also shifted the items in my sidebar around a bit. I think it is just right to Prioritize and give credit to those who stop by your site. So I wanted to make sure that the Top Commentators and Recent MyBlogLog visits are at the top of the page. Because without a doubt, it is the bloggers that make other blogs successful!

Speaking of giving credit! It has only been a short time since Saman wrote that blog, and already both Shawn Knight and Culture Shiok!, members of the Samanathon.com community, have stopped by to welcome me aboard with comments!

Thank You Saman!
Saman’s most recent technical article was entitled “Windows Hack: Delete The eBooks Folder Forever!”. You will find his site full of useful information like this. When it comes to Saman’s site, it is actually hard to pick just a few articles to write about. He has so many great ones and his site keeps you very entertained!

Thank You Shawn!
Shawn just recently wrote a great article titled “Blogging for Money: My Thoughts”. Its very interesting to see his perspective on this. I think I am in the middle here too when it comes to this subject. Sure I would like to blog to make money, just not only blog to make money! Its a great read - check it out. Shawn, you have been added to my RSS list buddy!

Thank You Culture Shiok!
This man does not seem to blog as often as the usual blogger, but don’t hold this against him. He is very active in the blogging community and is constantly commenting on other bloggers sites. In my way of thinking, that is one of the best bloggers you can find on the net - you want to make sure you say something nice about a guy like that - so maybe he will come back

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