Daily Blog Tip:  Finding the Hot Discussion Topics

Posted by The_Elves

As regular readers will know, we elves like lists and data. On Monday, we posted a "Titusonenine Top Ten" list to help those still trying to learn their way around the new blog have an easy way to find the posts that are generating the most comments. (One wag said since this is "T19" it should be a "top nine list!" We might just do that in the future...!)

So, how did we come up with that list? Is it just elfin magic? Or can regular readers quickly see what threads are being hotly discussed? Read on! With the new advanced search features here, you too can be an elf!

Here is how to search the blog for the posts with the most comments yourself, using the Advanced Search feature.

1. Go into Advanced Search (up at the top right near the search box and calendar)
2. For the broadest search possible, enter "the" as your keyword (you can of course limit to some keyword of your choosing, e.g. Anglican).
3. Choose: Search on Titles, Entries and Comments in the pull down menu to make sure you'll get all posts
4. Choose: Titusonenine in the blog selection menu
5. Choose: Any Category to search on ALL categories. Or limit to the category / categories of your choice. (Yes you can select MULTIPLE categories)
6. Finally, over on the far right choose: "Sort Results By: MOST COMMENTS"

This will give you a list of posts with the most comments EVER (assuming you've not limited your search by keyword or category).

You could also limit the date range of your search, example "today and newer" or "this week and newer." Try it out!

Filed under: * Admin • Blog Tips & Features

3 Comments
Posted May 30, 2007 at 7:33 am [Printer Friendly] [Print w/ comments]



1. tedmcm wrote:

One additional note is worthwhile…  Once you have setup your search, you can then drag/copy the URL to your desktop so that you can then run the same search over and over again without having to go through the process of reentering the search parameters.

Click on this link to try it out: Most Commented for This Week

May 31, 4:40 am | [comment link]
2. MargaretG wrote:

Hey - that link is a natty little number. (I hope that makes sense to the americans here).

It couldn’t be copied onto the sidebar (somewhere like near the monthly archives) so that we can click on it whenever we want the last weeks top posts.

May 31, 5:29 am | [comment link]
3. The_Elves wrote:

Ted & Margaret,
Great idea about saving the link… BUT there’s a problem.  I don’t think it will work.  I tried to save it as well.

Basically, it seems that SF uses some kind of temporary / dynamic links for each search that expire very quickly.  They don’t appear to be reusable.  I’ve asked Greg G. to research it.  He’s planning on trying to get help from the software developers on the tech discussion forums.
If we can change it, we will.

Any tech folks out there with ideas how to get some kind of permanent link for the weeks’ most-commented upon articles?  The search process is easy enough.  But it still takes some time. A reusable link would be ideal.

May 31, 8:30 pm | [comment link]
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