MyBlogLog is a website dedicated to bringing social to the blogosphere by bridging the gap between bloggers and their readers in the form of communities. Due to the rising popularity of MyBlogLog, it was purchased by Yahoo in January of 2007. Yahoo’s track record with acquisitions was brought up by many (*cough* Del.icio.us *cough*), but nearly 6 months later MyBlogLog has continued to improve their product, as well as promise that additional improvements are in the works.  You can keep an eye on what’s coming new with MyBlogLog via their official blog.  Because their future looks very bright, I’ve decided it’s finally time to throw this guide together.

Why should I use MyBlogLog? MyBlogLog contains two primary functions. The first and original function is their blog metrics service (free or $3.00 a month for same day statistics and more than the top 10). You can use their metrics service to determine where your referrals are coming from, as well as determine which ads are being clicked the most. Information comes in Where Readers Came From (which can be filtered between Content and Search), What Readers Viewed, and What Readers Clicked (which can be filtered between Content and Ads).

The second function is their social community pages, which were designed as a way to bring together bloggers and blog readers in one spot for open communication. Once you’ve created a MyBlogLog account and registered your blog, your site will get its own community page. Here people can add you as a contact, friend, family, etc., as well as leave you a message.

What good is all this information? Networking. Want to find other blogs of similar interest? Have a favorite blog and want to get to know others who love that blog? Solo SEO has created some MyBlogLog tools that are designed to help you get the most out of your community page by helping you find others with similar interests. Here are the six tools currently available with a brief description of their function:

• Compare Blog Visitors – Tool compares up to 130 of your most recent visitors and displays which MyBlogLog members have visited both websites.
• Compare Community Members – Tool that allows you to compare common members between two MyBlogLog communities.
• Common Communities between Contacts – Tool to show up to 20 communities that your contacts share.
• Compare Contacts – Tool that compares your contacts with friends and blog readers.
• Show Last Visitors – Tool similar to the popular MyBlogLog widget, this will display up to the last 130 visitors.
• Add Missing Contacts – Shows who you have in your community that has not yet been listed as a contact.

How do I get started with MyBlogLog?   Sounds like a great service, so you now want to get started?  Great!  Here is where I would normally cover everythign you need to get started, but i’m not sure I can say it much better than has already been done, so let me point you to The Complete Guide to MyBlogLog(ging).  Here you’ll find everything you need to get started.   

How do I integrate my blog with MyBlogLog? There are a few things you can do, most of which involve MyBlogLog widgets (Note: using these widgets has been known to slow down your page load time). From your MyBlogLog community page, click on the Widgets button. Currently the most popular MyBlogLog widget available is at the top called Recent Readers. In order to generate the code for your widget, you’ll need to first enter the colors of your blog’s theme. You can select a similar color or enter the exact 6 digit hexadecimal number. Then select the width you would like to make the widget. Now select ‘No’ and Show Screen Names and ‘Full-Size’ under Image Size. Lastly, select the number of rows you would like to use and the title (optional). Click Preview and Get Code. It will then provide you with some code for your site that should look something like this:

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://pub.mybloglog.com/comm2.php?mblID={Your MyBlogLog ID}&c_width=200&c_sn_opt=n&c_rows=7&c_img_size=f&c_heading_text=
&c_color_heading_bg=FFFFFF&c_color_heading=ffffff&c_color_link_bg=
FFFFFF&c_color_link=FFFFFF&c_color_bottom_bg=FFFFFF"></script>

This code can be pasted wherever you want your widget to appear, but most place it in their sidebar or footer (which are usually the last to load). Despite having the colors of your choice, you probably won’t be happy with how it looks. Luckily, there are several ways to alter the appearance to have your widget look however you want. Where it says width=200 in my example above, you can change this to the width of where you want to put it (usually about 10px less than your sidebar if placing in your sidebar). You can add and subtract rows by setting the rows=7 code to the number of rows you want. Want to fit additional avatars into your widget? Adjust the image_size=f to anything between a and e to find the desired image size. This may also depend on the height and number of rows you’ve previously set. The rest of the code you determined previously when you set up your widget, but can be modified at any time as long as you know the 6 digit hexadecimal number for the color you want to use. Currently, this widget will display a maximum of127 of your recent readers at one time.

Now, if you would also like to remove the ‘Provided by MyBlogLog’ and ‘View Reader Community’ logos from your widget, you can do so by pasting the following code into your stylesheet:

table#MBL_COMM td.mbl_fo_hidden {
display:none;
}

You also now have the option of getting a free MyBlogLog skin. Simply paste the following code just before the < /head > tag in your blog’s header to switch to a lighter or darker skin:

Light Colored Skin:

<LINK REL=StyleSheet href="http://www.auinteractive.com/mybloglog/light.css" mce_href="http://www.auinteractive.com/mybloglog/light.css" TYPE="text/css" MEDIA="screen">

Dark Colored Skin:

<LINK REL=StyleSheet href="http://www.auinteractive.com/mybloglog/dark.css" TYPE="text/css" MEDIA="screen">

That should allow you to get your widget to look how you want. If you’d also like to show your top links on your site, you can grab the code in the ‘Top Links’ section of the site and alter it using the same methods provided above.

At the bottom of the page, you’ll see a section called Join Community URL. Here you can get the URL needed to put a link to your community page on your site:

<a href="{Join Community URL}">Join My MyBlogLog Community!</a>

In the example above, you would just paste the code given where it says {Join Community URL}.

If you own a Wordpress blog, you can also integrate MyBlogLog into the comments of your site by using the MyAvatars plugin. Once you’ve loaded the plugin, it will match up the e-mail address used by the person leaving the comment with that person’s MyBlogLog avatar. (Note: Use of this plugin has been known to slow down your page load time a little bit)

Hopefully everyone has found this post useful. If you think I missed something or have a comment on MyBlogLog, please share it in the comments below!