I was originally hesitant to adopt Rand’s idea for editting the Links section in Movable Type. Then Brian adopted it with a couple minor changes… but I was still hesitant. For some reason yesterday I decided that there had to be a better way of doing this. That’s when I stumbled upon a concept called a BlogRoll.

They way I understand it, a BlogRoll is a list of URL’s you feel are pertinent to your blogs content. There are a few blog packages that support doing this, one of which is Radio UserLand. It’s an interesting package, but it’s not free. Then I stumbled across something a bit cooler, BlogRolling, which is a hosted service.

BlogRolling seems to store your lists for you. They then provide you with the html and/or php to add to your site… ideally to populate your Links frame… then they provide I guess what could be described as a bookmarklet to add a link to your list straight from your browser… blah blah blah.. you can find out all you want at the BlogRolling FAQ.

So the BlogRolling service isn’t free… and it’s hosted.. which means if their site goes down, your blog might suck for a while. So then what are other people using? That’s when I stumbled upon OPML…
There’s alot of hype about OPML for a blogroll. So maybe I’m a bit confused… but why use something relatively complex for something so simple as maintaining a list of URLs?!? Am I missing something? Here’s my path:

What essentially is OPML?
Essentially an XML based standard for doing outlining…
What is generating the OPML these guys are using?
RSS readers?!? But I expected a list of URLs…
Why would a news aggregator spit out a list of URLs?
I suppose a list of RSS feeds they are watching….
Why would a news aggregator do that? … and why OPML?
because they can store WAY more than just a list of links…

Okay so now I get it. Most of the people using OPML for doing their blogroll aren’t just listing out a set of HTTP URLs… they are listing out what they watch in their aggregator. So wait… that’s not what I want to do at all!

So what’s the point of this random rant? Rand and Brian did it right.

SUCKERS!!!