How can I show off my top Squidoo lenses?

For each category of lens you want to show you need to add an "RSS: Add your blog" module. You can add any title and description you want as usual, but to show your lens(es) from your chosen category you need to fill out the settings below. Most are really easy.

What URL would you like to pull RSS from? (The feed address)

This is the most important setting so there is a whole section below about what you need to enter in the form of an URL (a web address).

How many headlines would you like to show?

'Headline' here means items or lenses. Take your pick how many you want to show. In the example at the start of this lens I chose to display just one; the example at the bottom is set to 20.

Would you like to include an excerpt from each link in the feed?

Choose "everthing available" if you want to display the full text from the Intro module of your lens(es) or "no excerpt" if you want to show just the title of your lens. Don't use "excerpt (100 characters)" because the neat blue lines I have added take up almost all of your 100 characters!

How frequently should the module be updated?

Squidoo HQ only updates lensrank once a day so I tend to set this to 12 hours - there is no point setting it to update more often and it's better not to load the Squid servers when we don't need to. Sometimes you might even want to set it so that it never updates, for instance if you were writing a diary and wanted to preserve it so that your top entries at the time continued to be shown.

Would you like to display HTML in the excerpt?

You must set this to "yes".

You could just use your lensmaster feed address but that wouldn't allow you to show your top lens(es) in particular categories nor would you get the nice little blue line I have added to make it stand out. If you want these enhancements then you need to use this format for the feed address:

http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.run?_id=1369c42b35c5b9584766f2ff064ca13d&_render=rss&cat1=Arts&lensmaster=Kate-Phizackerley

You just need to change the two pieces of text I have highlighted in blue. Instead of 'Arts' put the Squidoo category you want. So changing Arts to Music would mean that your feed would just contain the lenses you have in your Music category. Case doesn't matter so you can use either Music or music.

The one thing that isn't entirely obvious is that you only use one word for the category (and no spaces). So for Squidoo Tips lenses, just enter Squidoo. For Computers, Gadgets and Technology, enter Computers. Finally, if you want all of you lenses then replace Arts with < b style="color:blue;">.*

The second change is much easier. Instead of Kate-Phizackerley you need to change this to your lensmaster name.

So for instance if you wanted Seth Godin's top book lens you would enter this feed address:

http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.run?_id=1369c42b35c5b9584766f2ff064ca13d&_render=rss&cat1=books&lensmaster=sethgodin