// Internet Duct Tape

Hack - Display Your Technorati Rank in a Sidebar RSS Widget (Dapper + Yahoo Pipes)

Posted in IDT Labs Software Development, Technology, Technorati, Yahoo Pipes by engtech on March 26th, 2007

technorati rank imageWordPress.com bloggers can’t use nifty WordPress plugins or Javascript to doing something as simple as displaying their Technorati rank in their sidebar. Dapper.net and Yahoo Pipes both give the users the ability to create their own mashups of existing web services. Neither of them quite get it right — Dapper doesn’t give you enough output / programming options and Yahoo Pipes doesn’t give you an interface for scraping any page the way Dapper does. Which is my long-winded way of saying I got Dapper to create RSS feeds that contain nothing but your Technorati rank.

Of course, the interface to the Dapper RSS feed is less than stellar, which is where Yahoo Pipes comes in. Yahoo Pipes also lets me create several flavours depending on what people want.

See the full list of free software I have created.

You can get frequent updates about all of my new software, tools or blog themes by subscribing to IDT Labs by RSS or by email. Or you could just subscribe to my main blog, Internet Duct Tape.

Subscribe to feed

To Use

1. Pick which ever of the following most appeals to you and click it.

2. Change the URL to your blog. Add any text you want to appear before or after the rank. Click Run Pipe.

technorati rank rss feed yahoo pipes widget

3. Copy the RSS feed link.

technorati rank rss feed yahoo pipes widget copy feed

4. Cut-and-paste the RSS feed link into a sidebar RSS widget and adjust it to only display 1 item. technorati rank rss feed yahoo pipes wordpress sidebar widget

I’m assuming you’re familiar with sidebar widgets. They’re under Dashboard >> Presentation >> Sidebar Widgets. More info.

You can also subscribe to that URL in your RSS reader to track your Technorati Rank changes. I have no idea how often the rank updates — maybe once a day?

If you find this useful please consider adding my blog as a Technorati favorite.

This was a fun project for myself to get familiar with Dapper and Yahoo Pipes. Neither of them are a complete solution on its own, but using Dapper as a web page scraper to create RSS inputs for Yahoo Pipes seems to be an optimal solution for glueing things together on the Internet.

12 Responses to 'Hack - Display Your Technorati Rank in a Sidebar RSS Widget (Dapper + Yahoo Pipes)'

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  1. timethief said, on March 26th, 2007 at

    Hi there I’ve been displaying my Technorati rank and the “favorites” button in my sidebar in a text widget for some time now. I manually updpate it once daily but your idea would provide automatic updating. Thanks for this and for all your do for wordpress.com bloggers. :)

  2. judyb12 said, on March 26th, 2007 at

    You’re amazing. I have favorite-d you :-)

  3. Friedbeef said, on March 28th, 2007 at

    Thats a great tip… fave’ed you too :)

  4. Get RSS Updates when your Site is Submitted to Digg or Reddit (Yahoo Pipes) « //engtech said, on March 28th, 2007 at

    [...] Yahoo Pipes RSS feed for Technorati Rank [...]

  5. نمایش رتبه وبلاگ درتکنوراتی « Barkhord said, on March 28th, 2007 at

    [...] رتبه وبلاگ درتکنوراتی وبلاگ engtech یک روش جالب معرفی کرده برای نمایش رتبه وبلاگ های [...]

  6. Digest for March 2007 « //engtech said, on April 5th, 2007 at

    [...] Hack - Display Your Technorati Rank in a Sidebar RSS Widget (using Dapper + Yahoo Pipes) This is how I display my Technorati rank of 1900 in my sidebar without javascript or a plugin and have it update automatically. [...]

  7. janesjournal said, on April 6th, 2007 at

    This is brilliant! I have added you to my Technorati Faves, which I consider small payment for your great help. Thanks muchly! :)

  8. Lola said, on April 14th, 2007 at

    thank you very much! I have fav’d you!

  9. "types" that work in IT « metropolitan observer said, on April 14th, 2007 at

    [...] “types” that work in IT Posted by Lola under new media  I was looking for a workaround to WordPress’s lack of a technorati widget when I found Engtech’s site. I found my widget, but even better, I found a hilarious post by [...]

  10. Add a Technorati Rank Widget for Blogspot » Ericulous said, on April 29th, 2007 at

    [...] Customization (Optional) * Change the way you link to Technorati Use the different flavours of Technorati Yahoo Pipes created by engtech.wordpress.com Share This Leave a comment Comment RSS Previous: Google Pagerank Update.. [...]

  11. Greasemonkey Script - Stumbling Through Wordpress.com Blogs « Internet Duct Tape said, on July 20th, 2007 at

    [...] Display your Technorati Rank in your sidebar This entry was written by engtech and posted on April 24, 2007 at and filed under Miscellaneous, Technology. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post. Post a comment or leave a trackback: Trackback URL. « Stumbling through //engtech at random (or any wordpress.com blog) 14 Tips to Get More Done in Less Time » [...]

  12. Get RSS Updates when your Site is Submitted to Digg or Reddit (Yahoo Pipes) « Internet Duct Tape said, on July 20th, 2007 at

    [...] Yahoo Pipes RSS feed for Technorati Rank [...]

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