Add a forum on your Blogger blog with Nabble

If you have many users on your blog and many comments, perhaps you should consider a forum to finish enriching your blog.

Create a Forum With Nabble

To implement a forum we will use Nabble, in my opinion, the best free option. We go to Nabble page and there, we will create an account (keep in mind that this account will be the moderator of the forum).

And once we have everything set (it also has a wide variety of customizing options), go to Options -> Application -> Change appearance:

There, we can also edit the CSS of the forum and other things...

Now we have to give the structure of a real forum, i.e. organizing it by categories. To do this click on the Options menu, select Application, then click Change application type:

Then choose the Forum category and save your changes.

To finish, we only have to create categories and for this go back to Options, this time select Structure and then choose Create a new sub-forum:

Fill in the details of the category and that's it, you will have your forum running.

The rest are small details, like sort categories (Options > Structure > Manage sub-forums), customize your avatar and your signature (YourNickname > Account Settings), change permissions (Options > Users > Permissions), etc..

Now for integrating the newly created forum to your blog, you must go to Options - Embedding options and copy the javascript code.

Embed the forum in a Blogger page

Go to your Blogger Dashboard and create a new Blank Page

Once there, get in the HTML mode.

Paste here the code that we copied earlier, and if everything went well, we should see our brand new forum for our blog!

I hope this tutorial was helpful to you and you will begin using this great service.

Top Commentators Widget with Avatars for Blogger

The commentators are a fundamental part of any blog, since they are the ones that give life to the blog, opening and replying to discussions which leads to more activity in the posts.

It is therefore very important to know which are the most active users of your blog, the users who leave more comments, and for this reason, today I present a great method to display a list with the top commentators.

The gadget will look something like this:

This Top Commentators gadget comes with user's avatar and is done with JavaScript.

How to Add the Top Commenters Gadget to Blogger

1. To add this gadget, you have to go to Layout, click on Add a Gadget link.

2. Select the HTML/JavaScript gadget and copy/paste within the empty box the following code:

<style type="text/css">
.top-commentators {
margin: 3px 0;
border-bottom: 1px dotted #ccc;
}
.avatar-top-commentators {
vertical-align:middle;
border-radius: 30px;
}
.top-commentators .commenter-link-name {
padding-left:0;
}
</style>
<script type="text/javascript">
var maxTopCommenters = 8;  
var minComments = 1;       
var numDays = 0;           
var excludeMe = true;      
var excludeUsers = ["Anonymous", "someotherusertoexclude"];   
var maxUserNameLength = 42;
//
var txtTopLine = '<b>[#].</b> [image] [user] ([count])';
var txtNoTopCommenters = 'No top commentators at this time.';
var txtAnonymous = '';
//
var sizeAvatar = 33;
var cropAvatar = true;
//
var urlNoAvatar = "https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-QPh6D5mNz35STy1a-id8D9H4b4aPrNU3L7MJRFPrJVPygc8g7CW5r6dIURsTDMkyamPhauFwatCp-QLkYgO9RTL7-6tMj_S78fHqJP3DR_eUejsEiSygRzv40ZOp-S3ToRmf65Mavd_e/s1600/avatar_blue_m_96.png" + sizeAvatar;
var urlAnoAvatar = 'https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFLjM3tmGOYihyphenhyphen9IHqYhlndy1B6_Roiru76NgRrhKH8GkT51szF9HGrr_Uob8q8LVxsiOlYU0ZbjCuTh1Qv2_qGn1n2XGihDAJPg2KVDc00s6SZmuGud1PcjQJDE9MJ6N8VsSrnLS9LeGJ/s1600/avatar1.png' + sizeAvatar;
var urlMyProfile = '';
var urlMyAvatar = '';

if(!Array.indexOf) {
 Array.prototype.indexOf=function(obj) {
  for(var i=0;i<this.length;i++) if(this[i]==obj) return i;
  return -1;
}}
function replaceTopCmtVars(text, item, position)
{
  if(!item || !item.author) return text;
  var author = item.author;

  var authorUri = "";
  if(author.uri && author.uri.$t != "")
    authorUri = author.uri.$t;

  var avaimg = urlAnoAvatar;
  var bloggerprofile = "http://www.blogger.com/profile/";
  if(author.gd$image && author.gd$image.src && authorUri.substr(0,bloggerprofile.length) == bloggerprofile)
    avaimg = author.gd$image.src;
  else {
    var parseurl = document.createElement('a');
    if(authorUri != "") {
      parseurl.href = authorUri;
      avaimg = 'http://www.google.com/s2/favicons?domain=' + parseurl.hostname;
    }
  }
  if(urlMyProfile != "" && authorUri == urlMyProfile && urlMyAvatar != "")
    avaimg = urlMyAvatar;
  if(avaimg == "http://img2.blogblog.com/img/b16-rounded.gif" && urlNoAvatar != "")
    avaimg = urlNoAvatar;
  var newsize="s"+sizeAvatar;
  avaimg = avaimg.replace(/\/s\d\d+-c\//, "/"+newsize+"-c/");
  if(cropAvatar) newsize+="-c";
  avaimg = avaimg.replace(/\/s\d\d+(-c){0,1}\//, "/"+newsize+"/");

  var authorName = author.name.$t;
  if(authorName == 'Anonymous' && txtAnonymous != '' && avaimg == urlAnoAvatar)
    authorName = txtAnonymous;
  var imgcode = '<img class="avatar-top-commentators" height="'+sizeAvatar+'" width="'+sizeAvatar+'" title="'+authorName+'" src="'+avaimg+'" />';
  if(authorUri!="") imgcode = '<a href="'+authorUri+'">'+imgcode+'</a>';

  if(maxUserNameLength > 3 && authorName.length > maxUserNameLength)
    authorName = authorName.substr(0, maxUserNameLength-3) + "...";
  var authorcode = authorName;
  if(authorUri!="") authorcode = '<a class="commenter-link-name" href="'+authorUri+'">'+authorcode+'</a>';

  text = text.replace('[user]', authorcode);
  text = text.replace('[image]', imgcode);
  text = text.replace('[#]', position);
  text = text.replace('[count]', item.count);
  return text;
}

var topcommenters = {};
var ndxbase = 1;
function showTopCommenters(json) {
  var one_day=1000*60*60*24;
  var today = new Date();

  if(urlMyProfile == "") {
    var elements = document.getElementsByTagName("*");
    var expr = /(^| )profile-link( |$)/;
    for(var i=0 ; i<elements.length ; i++)
      if(expr.test(elements[i].className)) {
        urlMyProfile = elements[i].href;
        break;
      }
  }

  if(json && json.feed && json.feed.entry && json.feed.entry.length) for(var i = 0 ; i < json.feed.entry.length ; i++ ) {
    var entry = json.feed.entry[i];
    if(numDays > 0) {
      var datePart = entry.published.$t.match(/\d+/g);
      var cmtDate = new Date(datePart[0],datePart[1]-1,datePart[2],datePart[3],datePart[4],datePart[5]);
     
      var days = Math.ceil((today.getTime()-cmtDate.getTime())/(one_day));
      if(days > numDays) break;
    }
    var authorUri = "";
    if(entry.author[0].uri && entry.author[0].uri.$t != "")
      authorUri = entry.author[0].uri.$t;

    if(excludeMe && authorUri != "" && authorUri == urlMyProfile)
      continue;
    var authorName = entry.author[0].name.$t;
    if(excludeUsers.indexOf(authorName) != -1)
      continue;

    var hash=entry.author[0].name.$t + "-" + authorUri;
    if(topcommenters[hash])
      topcommenters[hash].count++;
    else {
      var commenter = new Object();
      commenter.author = entry.author[0];
      commenter.count = 1;
      topcommenters[hash] = commenter;
    }
  }
  if(json && json.feed && json.feed.entry && json.feed.entry.length && json.feed.entry.length == 200) {
    ndxbase += 200;
    document.write('<script type="text/javascript" src="http://'+window.location.hostname+'/feeds/comments/default?redirect=false&max-results=200&start-index='+ndxbase+'&alt=json-in-script&callback=showTopCommenters"></'+'script>');
    return;
  }

  // convert object to array of tuples
  var tuplear = [];
  for(var key in topcommenters) tuplear.push([key, topcommenters[key]]);

  tuplear.sort(function(a, b) {
    if(b[1].count-a[1].count)
        return b[1].count-a[1].count;
    return (a[1].author.name.$t.toLowerCase() < b[1].author.name.$t.toLowerCase()) ? -1 : 1;
  });

  var realcount = 0;
  for(var i = 0; i < maxTopCommenters && i < tuplear.length ; i++) {
    var item = tuplear[i][1];
    if(item.count < minComments)
        break;
    document.write('<di'+'v class="top-commentators">');
    document.write(replaceTopCmtVars(txtTopLine, item, realcount+1));
    document.write('</d'+'iv>');
    realcount++;
  }
  if(!realcount)
    document.write(txtNoTopCommenters);
}
document.write('<script type="text/javascript" src="http://'+window.location.hostname+'/feeds/comments/default?redirect=false&max-results=200&alt=json-in-script&callback=showTopCommenters"></'+'script>');
</script>

3. Now you just have to save changes and you're done!

Configuration

- To modify the number of users displayed in the gadget, look for var maxTopCommenters = 8; and change 8 with any number you want.
- To change the avatar size of the commenters, look for var sizeAvatar = 33; and change number 33 with the number of pixels you want.