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How to get your blog added to the UnpluggedShop.com aggregator
Starting with www.toolemera.com, The Village Carpenter, and Matt's Basement Workshop among others, I have been slowly adding new blogs to the aggregator on this site.
The aggregator displays the headlines from the source blogs for the last two weeks and provides a convenient link to the blog. Headlines are updated automatically and generally should be updated within three hours of when you post them.
In order to get your blog added, basically all I am looking for is that you blog mostly about topics that would be of interest to the readership of this site. Basically, that means that you write or talk mostly about hand tool woodworking, or perhaps traditional finishes and designs, or suchlike. Tool collecting in and of itself doesn't count unless it is actually related to real woodworking.
It is not necessary that you have a long history in the blogosphere or that you have built up a loyal and faithful following. It is, however, necessary that you provide a valid RSS feed which most blogging software does anyway. Even if you didn't know it, it is likely that your blog is already doing this. Also, I have no problems including blogs by people who are in the business of selling things as long as their blog is actually useful and interesting. We already have some who offer various (useful) products for sale.
You will notice that the current blogs are quite varied in scope and include Windsor chair making, luthiery, wooden plane making, and many other things. I still don't have any that deal with hand carving wood, but I suspect there are some good ones out there.
Anyway, if you have been lurking about the site, but were afraid to ask if I would include your blog, or a favorite blog that you have found, please drop send me an email or add a comment to this post, and I will check it out.
Of course, I can't include every blog, and I do reserve the right to choose which ones to include. Generally, if over half of your articles are well written and relate directly to some aspect of hand tool woodworking, you will get added.
The headline aggregator is a free service and no remuneration is asked for or expected. A link back is always nice, but even that is not required.
Luke Townsley
www.UnpluggedShop.com
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i have found the aggregator the most useful tool (not to denigrate your postings) but i cannot find it any longer. How do i get it to show when I open your site?
I'm glad you like the aggregator.
You must be using a smallish screen. Just scroll down a bit on the front page. It is now on the main column of the front page right under the Google custom search box.
Alternatively, you can just bookmark this page:
http://www.unpluggedshop.com/content/hand-tool-news-around-world
I am only aggregating headlines. There was a time when I aggregated entire articles, but that was a lot more difficult since I had to get permission for each blog to do it. Understandably, there were those who either didn't want to do that with their blog or weren't convinced it was a good thing.
I also tried hand writing summaries of blog posts, but that turned into a bit of work and the Google Custom Site Search turned out to be a better tool to index the material on those sites than my descriptions.
I would probably not be opposed to offering short summaries along with the headlines, but that is difficult to parse consistently from a technical standpoint, raises more questions about copyright infringement, adds more text to my already text-heavy aggregator page, and I am not convinced there would even be a significant potential benefit.
Also, most of the writers I am aggregating do a pretty good job writing descriptive headlines that clue you in as to the content of the article.
Besides that, part of the whole idea of aggregating these blogs is to drive traffic to the originating sites. Even if I included entire articles with pictures and everything, it would still be a different experience than you would get by going to their site. I want to make it convenient for the readers, but for a fuller experience, I think these blogs should generally be read in the context they were originally intended.
A lot of what this site is about is raising awareness of hand tool usage. Visiting the sites of people who are writing about it is one of the more useful and enjoyable ways to learn about it.
Not by your method but by clicking on the unpluggedshop.com headine in your title bar.
Works every time.
Do you have plans to edit some of the content. one or two bloggers seem to be dominant and they rarely provide pertinent or useful commentary. I for one could do without full chisel and wisdom (sic) of the hands.
Full Chisel isn't going anywhere anytime soon. It is a really awesome blog that fits great with the tenor of this site. It absolutely belongs here. You are right that Stephen has been writing pretty actively lately. I hope he keeps it up.
Wisdom of the Hands is new here. It is a really great blog, and has a bit of a different flavor than most of the others.
It is pretty easy to glance at the headline and move on if you aren't interested.
Unfortunately, the RSS aggregator often gets confused due to the non-standard nature of the titles in the RSS feed of Wisdom of the Hands. The end effect is that the headlines often get lost and are substituted by some gibberish.
If you aren't happy with my choices for the aggregator, I would suggest that you go to my sources page and add the ones you want to your favorite RSS feed aggregator. You might try www.bloglines.com
It is pretty easy to set up and allows you to have a custom made list that can include all of your favorite blogs, not just ones on hand tool woodworking.
I don't edit edit each entry in the blog aggregator. Right now, it is set to automatically pick up all headlines from the last two weeks for all of the blogs that I track. After trying different things and fine tuning for a while, I have been pretty happy with the way it is now and I don't have any plans to change that significantly.
Luke,
I'm a hybrid type of guy, so I'm not sure if the blog will fully satisfy your handtool requirement, but I spend much of my blogging time on handtools and general interest. I'm definately a user, though, not a collector.
If you think it fits, I would love for A Woodworking Odyssey to be included on your aggregator:
www.robertkarl.org/woodworkingblog
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