Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with Weblogs

Who has been blogging longer than I?

GatorDavid — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 11:12:40 -0800

BlogFilter: Is there a reliable directory of blogs? My motivation is self-centered, to be sure. Basically I'm interested because I'm quickly approaching my ten-year anniversary and I'm wondering where that places me in the evolutionary chain.

I know that Kottke, Anil, Zannah, and TheBrad have all been blogging (slightly) longer than I've been. But how many others are out there that have blogging since the beginning?

Are there thousands of bloggers approaching their first decade? Hundreds? Dozens?

World-wide Journal Club?

The White Hat — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 10:22:52 -0800

Is there a MeFi-like site that deals exclusively in academic writing? Lunit's post today reminded me of how much I enjoy reading journal articles from fields outside my own. Then it set me to wondering if there was a single aggregator of scholarly articles from multiple disciplines-- a best-of site for science, engineering, and humanities writing. Is there such a thing on the tubes?

I listened to Kraftwerk all day

Substrata — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 11:26:47 -0800

What are the best MeFi-, Robotwisdom-, Agonist-like weblogs from Germany and in the German language ? A previous thread gave me some links, but i do not care for them and they were not in the same league as the blogs mentioned above.

Blogs that teach?

btkuhn — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 16:59:34 -0800

Blogs that teach? Most of the daily blogs that I read, even the "scholarly" ones or those dealing with a particular subject, are focused on links to topics of interest, or the blog writer's analysis of a particular topic. For instance, the volokh conspiracy is an excellent law blog, but it doesn't "teach" the fundamentals of law to the reader; rather, it addresses specific rulings, usually with the author's analysis of the issue.

I am interested in finding blogs that teach the reader about the subject of the blog. To continue with the subject of law, I want to find blogs that say, for example, "Today we are going to learn about contract law (or one particular aspect of contract law)", and then go over the basics of contract law. Kind of like that email service that emails you a few pages of a book every day. It seems like there are plenty of podcasts online that do this (I've used MIT courseware in the past and it's great), but I learn much better with the written word format. Plus, an RSS feed breaks things up so that you don't have to set aside an hour to watch a lecture.

I'm not interested only in "academic" blogs; any feed that teaches a subject or skill in a stepwise manner via RSS. I'm thinking bird-watching, or juggling, playing the guitar...

What is your favourite blog?

feelinglistless — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 13:21:18 -0800

What is your favourite blog? I recently had a cull of the blogs I've been reading, mostly because they tended towards the corporate and weren't that entertaining or in some cases readable. I'm on the look out for new blogs to read, and having looked at the Bloggies nominees and the usual suspects, what I'd really like are the undervalued gems, the ones which are never nominated for anything but are just consistently excellent anyway. Any genre, any style, any location. Any ideas?

Label problem in Blogger

GaelFC — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 09:33:42 -0800

How do I get Blogger to show more than 20 posts with the same label? I suspect this is a simple question, but I searched through Blogger Help and couldn't figure it out.

I have a family recipe blog that uses Blogger. I've set it up to show all the labels automatically on the front page. It automatically tells me how many recipes (posts) I've tagged with each label, for example: "Chocolate: 10."

But for the labels that are used more than 20 times, I run into trouble. The automatic list says, for example, "Main courses: 36." But when I click on that label, only 20 are shown.

Is there any way to get it to show all 36? Or a workaround? I've tried tagging my newest posts all with "new," but that's not really what I want.

I thought I read somewhere that this was a known bug that would be fixed, but I'm sure that was over a year ago.

Thanks for any help.

What weblogs will make me smart and interesting and beautiful?

logic vs love — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 12:42:46 -0800

What are the best weblogs? My google reader is overwhelmed with celebrity gossip weblogs, and I'd like to replace those with something slightly more edifying. I'm looking for blogs on a specific subject, not just personal weblogs like Dooce or something. I have a wide variety of interests, so pretty much any topic is welcome. (Things I love: art, fashion, interior design, crafts, cooking. Things I would love to learn more about: finance/economics, politics, web/graphic design, SCIENCE!, &c.)

I've browsed though past questions and pulled some recommendations from there, but I need more!

Are there any really interesting web sites that discuss the video game Neverwinter Nights?

chunking express — Mon, 27 Aug 2007 10:30:37 -0800

Are there any really interesting web sites that discuss the video game Neverwinter Nights? (Ideally, Neverwinter Nights 2.) I'd also be interested in web sites that discuss D&D.

Is there something like WoW Insider or , but for Neverwinter Nights 2 or for D&D?

Nintendo DS news into my Bloglines, please.

Ufez Jones — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 17:25:53 -0800

Searching through the tags, I don't think this has been asked before. I'm looking for feeds that I can slap into my Bloglines that will keep me updated on Nintendo DS releases and reviews. I don't have the time or commitment to go all around the various gaming sites on a week-by-week basis to keep abreast of all the new releases and/or new games that the DS'ers at large deem worthy of checking out. However, I'm interested in keeping an eye out for titles that I may (eventually) want to pick up.

Feeds need not be DS-exclusive (I can ignore other platform releases and reviews), but I'd like to be able to keep up on what's what regarding DS titles and the simplest way for me to do this is with my feedreader. Anyone have any suggestions?

I've got the low-down weblog blues

missmobtown — Fri, 20 Oct 2006 15:56:16 -0800

Hullo. I'm compiling some weblog traffic reports for a site running on two servers (for load balancing). As they are wont to do, each server has collected differnt data... I'm ok as far as the hard numbers go (visitors, views, etc.) but I'm having trouble with figuring out how to present data on things like top ten pages visited, top referrers, etc., since the data for each server is different. Unfortunately these older weblogs are crunched in Webalizer, not a particularly robust compiling program. Any tips or advice from anyone else who does these types of reports about how to lay this out clearly for a persnickety client?

What are some good MMORPG blogs?

chunking express — Tue, 22 Aug 2006 11:54:59 -0800

Can anyone recomend any good weblogs on MMORPGs? In particular, I would like to read ones about World of Warcraft. I'm looking for stuff that is thoughtful and well written. For example, I liked this article on Star Wars Galaxies.

The Greatest Generation of Weblogs?

GaelFC — Tue, 04 Apr 2006 16:09:08 -0800

Any Weblogs out there for or by the World War II generation? I know not everyone of that age group is computer savvy, but my mom is, and since there seem to be Weblogs for every other subgroup, I'd love to find her a few good links. If not, she may have to start her own...

How do I make Network Solutions and Typepad work?

nthdegx — Sat, 21 Jan 2006 05:13:48 -0800

Please please please can someone help me make my Network Solutions registered domain map to my Typepad site? When attempting to follow Typepad's instructions for setting up domain mapping with a Network Solutions registered domain I receive the warning that "An A record already exists for the entered Alias". Has this anything to do with the domain presently pointing to a Network Solutions under construction page? Has anyone experience with using Network Solutions and Typepad that can offer advice on getting domain mapping to work? Any DNS monkeys care to volunteer to fix this for me? I'm that sick of it I'm willing to pay someone at this point as I'm not really getting the answers I need from either party.

How to fix an Atom feed?

misteraitch — Wed, 26 Oct 2005 01:58:58 -0800

I'm told that my weblog's atom feed is broken: according to feedvalidator.org this is because 'my feed appears to be encoded as "utf-8", but my server is reporting "US-ASCII". Is it advisable that I should persuade my server to report an 'utf-8', ecoding, and, if so, how? Here's the feed in question. I'm running MT 3.2: it's only since I upgraded to this version of MT that the site has been trying to encode in utf-8. According to the feedvalidator site, I should 'either ensure that the charset parameter of the HTTP Content-Type header matches the encoding declaration,' or 'ensure that the server makes no claims about the encoding.' How do I do this? I have limited (CPanelX) access to my webserver and a decidedly faint and incomplete grasp of the technicalities involved.

Fake Blogs

me3dia — Wed, 14 Sep 2005 09:34:17 -0800

What's the point of fake blogs? Testing out the new Google blog search, and in my experience with Technorati's blog search, I've come across a number of blogs that clearly exist to draw search engine traffic -- they're informationally barren, and many of them don't even have links to the topic they supposedly cover, be it hair salons or airfare. Are they just part of a pagerank game for some other site or Adsense adfarms, or is there some other use?

As a follow-up question, is there any way to flag these sites with Google or Technorati to get them out of the searches?

RSS feed blog

feelinglistless — Sun, 06 Mar 2005 09:52:13 -0800

Is there a way of getting an RSS feed to post itself automatically inline into a 'Blogger' weblog? I've asked similar questions before, but I've had another thought. Is there a website or system which effectively makes a new post at Blogger each time a new item appears in an RSS feed. I'm not talking about in the side bar, I'm talking about as actual blog posts. Although I've been using feedburner I want something which effectively does the same but on my own blog.

Now that I read that back I'm not sure if it makes any sense. Best see what happens.

Weblogs Inc sites down?

braun_richard — Wed, 23 Feb 2005 12:33:32 -0800

Is there something going on with all the Weblogs Inc sites that we should know about? I haven't been able to access ANY of them (the weblogsinc main page, Blog Maverick, Jason Calacanis' site, Engadget, etc) for days!

Seeking Gonzo journalism blogs

Jimbob — Mon, 01 Nov 2004 18:48:19 -0800

I've been reading a lot of Hunter S. Thompson lately, and have become addicted to his "Gonzo journalism". Can anyone reccomend any weblogs, online zines or young authors that display that kind of brazen, muckraking writing style?

A-list weblogs?

timeistight — Tue, 29 Jun 2004 18:23:47 -0800

So… which weblogs are the in A-list?

I'm looking for a very simple self-hosted blogging/CMS tool.

casarkos — Wed, 12 May 2004 18:29:54 -0800

I'm looking for a very simple self-hosted blogging/CMS tool. Are there any that don't require a database or CGI on the server?

Movable Type-Friendly Webhost for $0-5/mo., Apache Preferred?

scarabic — Wed, 21 Apr 2004 15:58:55 -0800

Can anyone recommend a decent web host whose cheapie package will support the cgi magic that is Moveable Type? I'm about to start a new Moveable Type blog and I'd like to host it in the $0-$5 per month range. I don't need a lot of web space. I don't want to use Type Pad's "Basic" service, because of the features it lacks. Is there a MT-equivalent of Blogspot? Apache on *nix would be preferred. SP - "Movable Type." Sorry!

Best online libraries with articles on weblogs? Free is better

sailoreagle — Sun, 11 Apr 2004 08:51:31 -0800

Anybody know of any good online libraries? I'm especially interested in libraries containing articles on weblogs, as that's the theme of my dissertation and that's what this research is for. If you can point me directly at good interesting articles on weblogs, that would be great too. :) (Yes, I'm aware I may be asking too much, but I figure there's no harm in asking.)
Bonus points if they're free resources, but I'm not opposed to paying a small sum to get articles if I have to.

Good Free RSS Feed for Keyword Search on Weblogs?

kokogiak — Wed, 07 Apr 2004 10:09:25 -0800

Anyone know of a good, reliable (free) RSS feed for Weblog Keyword Search? Technorati seemed like the most likely candidate, but they don't currently export keyword searches to RSS. I've found a couple others that do, including Feedster (a bit slow) and I thought that Blogines might do this, but they say they don't currently export keyword searches.

What I'm looking for is something as groovy and reliable as Yahoo News Search RSS (example keyword Metafilter) - but searching Weblogs, not the news. Any/all suggestions welcome - I'd rather not resort to page-scraping. Oh, and I forgot to mention I'd also tried Daypop as well - but for whatever reason, it seems to flake on me rather often.

What's the definitive solution to comment spam on weblogs?

soyjoy — Mon, 15 Mar 2004 12:37:19 -0800

IP EXPERTS! What's the definitive solution to comment spam on weblogs? I manage one that has been spammed with links to supposedly pornographic third-level domains, e.g. http://red-hot-anal-sluts.boringaddress.com, sometimes with a folder afterward. [Mo' inside] When the first couple came in I just banned the IP (in Moveable Type), but they keep on coming, with new IPs. I can find interesting info about the IPs and the domain name here, but then what do I do? After all, the owners of the domain may not even be aware of, much less responsible for, the spam. Legally speaking, that is. So, is there a way to convey "cease-and-desist" so it gets through to the spammer? And if they're just jumping on IPs temporarily, is someone else going to be blocked later because of this? Any answers, including pointers to previous AskMefi threads (I did look, but couldn't find), will be greatly appreciated.

What is the best free logfile analyzer?

Grod — Sat, 06 Mar 2004 22:19:04 -0800

What is the best free logfile analyzer? I've been using the trial version of Web Log Explorer Pro and like it well enough but I want more options about how to display and correlate data. [more inside] I tried using analog but couldn't get it to work. My log files are in the format

CustomLog  /var/log/httpd/access_log "%{Host}i %h %l %u %t \"%r\" %s %b \"%{Referer}i\" \"%{User-agent}i\" %b"

and most tools I've tried have no problem autodetecting that, but analog didn't get it. I like being able to download the logfiles and save them offline so I don't want a program that sits on the server. Any suggestions?