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Nov 04

Create Your Own Social News Site

This article was written on July 13, 2010 by CyberNet.

slinkset setup.png

Sites like Digg and Reddit have been becoming increasing popular because the news and stories that are put in front of the users are those that receive the largest number of votes. Reddit has let users create their own “Reddits” for awhile now, but a site called Slinkset offers some extensive customization while maintaining the fundamental structure of Reddit.

Signing up for Slinkset is incredibly easy. In fact the screenshot you see above is the only information that you have to provide to get a site in working order. Once you create a site, however, you’ll probably want to play around with some customizations. You can do things like change color schemes, fonts, logos, or even provide a custom CSS template:

slinkset customize.png

A simple example of a Slinkset site is this one that has been populated with different ways people use Evernote. On the opposite end of the spectrum is this one that has a more customized design, and actually doesn’t use the voting mechanism at all. Instead it serves as a way to aggregate bad car buying stories.

Beyond the design there are a lot of other settings you can change. You can manage/ban users, use a custom URL (a.k.a. one that is not something.slinkset.com), integrate with your Google Analytics account, and more. One of the nicest features might be that you can insert custom HTML into the sidebar, which means you can include ads or pull content from your own site using an iframe.

Slinkset isn’t something that everyone will use, but it can certainly have its moment. Thanks to some of the privacy features I was thinking that you could create a private site for your work as a way to come up with ideas for, let’s say, a work party. People could submit their ideas, comment on them, and vote for their favorites. Hey, it might be fun.