Making social networking sites speak to each other

[wshaffer]

I've spent a little time this weekend tidying up my various 'net presences. I've done a long overdue revamp of my Mac.com homepage, updating my bio a tad, revamping my Links page, and replacing links to the woefully out-of-date online copy of the my resume with links to my LinkedIn profile, which at least has a prayer of getting updated now and then. (I have very little evidence that anyone has ever looked at my online resume. I do know that people occasionally look at my LinkedIn profile.)

I've also figured out how to pull data from my GoodReads profile to display on my Facebook profile and on my livejournal. I really like using GoodReads as a way of tracking what I've been reading, but as a social networking tool, it's been a bit of a non-starter. Hardly anyone I know is using it. Now, if you're interested in what I've been reading recently, you can look at my livejournal's sidebar or my user profile, and see a list. (It's not perfect - it only seems to display the most recent items in the "Currently Reading" list, which means that a couple of big fat tomes that I've been sloooowly reading through for months do not appear on the list.)

The last item on the to-do list is to spiff up my LinkedIn profile a bit. I'm not really terribly motivated to do this, since I'm not actually looking for a job at the moment, but they do say that the time to do these sorts of things is when you're not looking for a job.

Comments

[sbuchler.livejournal.com]

So how do you get GoodReads to display on LJ?

Now that you mentioned it, I'm using it. Am trying to keep track of what I'm reading this year - turns out mostly I'm reading stuff I've just bought, which means my backlog just gets bigger and bigger :-S

[wshaffer.livejournal.com]

I have similar issues with reading stuff I just bought. I'm hoping that by tracking the backlog in my "to-read" shelf, I'll inspire myself to whittle it away faster.

Here is my first stab at explaining how to get GoodReads to display on LJ:

First, you need to create a widget:

1. At the top right of your "my books" page in GoodReads, click the widgets link.


2. Under the "dynamic widgets" heading, select a type of widget. The cool flash widget doesn't work with livejournal, unfortunately. The 220 pixel image widget is the best choice for the journal sidebar.


3. Copy the HTML code for your widget from the little text box marked "Copy/paste the below html into your website."

Then you need to put the code into your livejournal. To put it in your user profile, just paste the code into your bio. Getting the code into your sidebar is a slightly more involved process:

1. On your livejournal's home page, click Customize.


2. Click Customize Selected Theme.


3. Click Sidebar.


4. Expand the Sidebar option and set the Sidebar Width to a width greater than that you selected for your widget. (I used 230 pixels for my 220 pixel widget.)


5. Expand the Free Text option. Set the Free Text Position to something besides "hide". (I had to play with this a bit to get it to work. I found that setting it to "16" gave me a box that displayed just above my entry tags.)


6. Enter a title in the Free Text Sidebox Title field.


7. Paste the HTML code for your widget in the Free Text Sidebox Text field.


8. Click Save Changes

Note that these instructions assume that you're using an S2 style on your journal. I don't really know how this works if you use an S1 style.

[sbuchler.livejournal.com]

Hum... I can't change the size of my sidebar... I wonder if I need to change the style of my journal in order to do that...? Also, the place to put the text is called Custom Text in mine, rather then Free Text... :-S

Very clear instructions, thanks!