One thing that I've always wanted was to be able to see a blog's reason for linking to someone, often I would search the archives to see if they had blogged about it, and often it had not been.
Well last night - it came to me.
Instead of working in the template itself, I could create a new category in the blog. This would allow people to actually blog about entries. Make the topic of the entry the link, and then put the reason for linking them or your thoughts on their site in the body of the entry.
Then put the blogroll in your sideroll. Below is the code which I used.
CODE
<MTEntries category="Blogroll" sort_order="ascend">
<BR><$MTEntryTitle$> [<A HREF="<$MTEntryLink$>">?</A>]
</MTEntries>
<BR><$MTEntryTitle$> [<A HREF="<$MTEntryLink$>">?</A>]
</MTEntries>
Now there are two links here, the title of the entry itself followed by a [?] which an entry link so the reader can find why I linked them.
Now this requires you to make each entry for the blogroll a link by hand, so it requires some more work. The other possibility is to put the title of the site as the topic for the entry and use the excerpt for the site address. Then use code like:
CODE
<MTEntries category="Blogroll" sort_order="ascend">
<BR><A HREF="<$MTEntryExcerpt$>" target="_blank"><$MTEntryTitle$></A> [<A HREF="<$MTEntryLink$>">?</A>]
</MTEntries>
<BR><A HREF="<$MTEntryExcerpt$>" target="_blank"><$MTEntryTitle$></A> [<A HREF="<$MTEntryLink$>">?</A>]
</MTEntries>
I didn't do it this way because I wanted the entry already linked when it showed up in the normal body of the blog. But either way should work.
Another choice besides making it a category in the blog is to create a new MT Blog and use the OtherBlog plugin. I am going to explore this option more but I didn't last night.
Some further notes:
Transferring the roll over can be a bit time consuming, and embarassing at times. Since the blogroll is almost completely separate from the blog itself I found several blogs who I don't really read anymore, or some who I read but don't really remember why I read them.
Also this will basically clear your front page (if you only show n entries) while the entries are often short they just scroll through the page. I pondered posting then changing the date to push them out of the main screen but I decided it didn't bother me that much.
And that's about it. I invite someone else to get involved and play with the OtherBlog thing, but I don't have it installed anymore.
Thoughts? Ideas?