Starting a Book on Page 300
Starting a Book on Page 300
A person does not start to read a book on page 300, however this is what a blog demands you do. A reader has a great request and high times somebody complained.
REQUEST: Andy HoboTraveler.com Travel Blog
Name: Bob L
Country: USA
Message:
Could you please add a link to next on your pages. I would really like to view your blog from oldest to newest. There is a link to previous, but not to next.
Personally, I would rather see any Blog page have the oldest requested post shown on the top. I have only seen this in a few Blog programs where I could select a date, say Dec 31, and it would show dec 31 on top, then jan 1, then jan 2 etc. But since almost no one is doing it I guess I am one of only a few that complaint.
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Bangkok Thailand - Southeast Asia
Khao San Road
Sunday, January 6, 2008
Andy of HoboTraveler.com --- Submit Hotel URL
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ANSWER
Great request, absolutely correct, and one of the biggest annoyances of my life. If you think, I have written now as of today 3,444 posts. Moreover, I, Andy, ME, does not have anyway to read my own blog.
Eric offered to do a table of contents for me a year ago, and silly me stopped him because I thought I could just go use a macro and do it.
People recommend I change from Blogger.com to Wordpress; they want me to change my - Blog Publishing System. -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blogger.com
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WordPress
Truth is both are Ass Backwards. The reason people use a blog publishing system is because they do not know how to make a web site and easy. (I started blogging to allow readers to read daily my trip to Iraq, then I planned to stop, I thought I would just post start to finish.)
I do not read blogs, I read books, I Andy of HoboTraveler.com hate to read blogs, and I for sure hate to read travel blogs, and refuse to use RSS readers, like never completing a sentence.
Why, because I am always starting the book at the end and trying to figure out what the person is up too………………………………..................
Being that I normally do not have an internet connection, how am I supposed to read a book backwards, figure out what they are doing, and then try to stay interested I lose interest immediately and go look at a one-page articles on Wiki. This is why a blog post needs to be one topic, and not more than one, and cannot assume anyone has read anything before or after. I try to write this way, however that is not the way the story goes…
Whatever the case, Bob L, you are the smart one. I will do the next and previous thing if I can get Boy Genius in India to help.
I unfortunately need an internet connection to do this work, this is my major problem, I am a traveler, and I do not normally have an internet connection. I am making a web site, however I do no get to check to see if it even is there…
I am now planning to tame this beast; I will try to find a good connection every three months to solve this problem.
I will stop, there is no end to how many comments, thoughts and opinions I have on this subject, I know clearly now the problem and trust me, I continually search for solutions. I suppose I search for cheap solutions, I know how to do it for about 10,000 dollars,
Starting a Book on Page 300
posted by Andy HoboTraveler.com at 7:40 AM
9 Comments:
Andy,
Pure opinion here...
First, a blog is not a book.
I think the longer a blog gets the higher the possibility that page 1 possibly contains obsolete information.
Having reverse chronology means the most current content is what is displayed first. For those who follow a blog regularly, it is preferred. IMHO.
As for web design, I try and follow the three click rule; you should be able to get anywhere on a site in no more than three clicks. On a shallow site you should be able to get to any page FROM any page. If these are applied and you started on page 300 it would be no problem to go to page 1 easily and pick up the story at the beginning if desired.
My offer to do the 2006 table of contents still stands. I'll do 2007 if you like as well.
Eric
Three Click Rule is correct, my only excuse is I never know where I am going until I am there.... Now I can 3 click it back.
Correct, blog is not a book, however to make money, I think I could spin off some PDF books, and other ways, so on and so forth, so working on this.
The amount of work to do the table without having all the files to me is staggering. I finally downloaded all 3400 files, and am using Macro Express to automated grab and paste into a database. So being I have the raw data thought better to do myself as is easier. The power of procrastination is high though.
I almost have 2006 done, and 2007 soon.
We hope to put in a MySql database someday that will allow all the bells to play.
You should have dumped the problem on some computer geek in Manila for
$ 500 is 2 good months pay.
The Philippines people culture has a concentration problem. I have a sincere desire to not work.
Plus this is at best a 100 dollar problem for the USA person. There is also this, by the time I explained it, it would be done.
Here is something we did in the last 24 hours, or in about 2 hours or less.
2006 Table of Contents
2007 Table of Contents
For those who do not know, we are also working on putting up 8 Million cities, where a computer parse takes 24 hours to run.
Lot of toys.
Andy, I had not realized when I looked at your older indexes that they were in alphabetical order. Also that there is no date next to them.
Again, it is important to have a way to go through a Blog from older to newer, choosing the date to start at. There are many ways to do it, with indexes, with forward/back buttons or whatever.
I am old fashioned. I like my filenames to start with a sortable date such as 2008-01-07-fdfdfkj.txt I want to read things in order. I had a Blog way back when that would normally show the blog as most of them do, BUT if you wanted you could choose forward/backwards and any date range. So, if someone had not checked my site since November 15th, they could put that date in and read the posts in order. Something like Craig does at Travelvice.com is fine. Actually, even what you have here would be OK if the list of previous posts on the left went farther back and had posts after the current one. Hell, this should be SIMPLE.
Maybe the simplest thing to do would be to put in a "next" button, or even go in with HTML and put the address of the current post into the end of the last one. Then a reader could click on today's post, go backwards until he got to a post he has seen again and just use the back button as he reads it. HEY, WAIT A MINUTE, that can be done now. Duhhh. Sometimes my ranting will help solve a problem of mine.
Bob L
The example was a wordpress blog.
We need a blogger.com blog as examples.
The database behind the blog is what is difficult, not the HTML. The Sql database needs to be controlled and blogger.com is in control.
I did a quick search and found these. They all have a link to newer AND older posts plus they have some sort of clickable archive by year and month.
Understand that I am not complaining, just trying to help out and adjust my world to fit me better. 8^)
http://code.blogger.com/2007/10/reporting-and-tracking-blogger-api-bugs.html
http://truckhouse.blogspot.com/
http://juicedsportsblog.com/2008/01/im-a-blogger-powered-blog-of-note.html
http://carbonfund.blogspot.com/2008/01/heres-to-fewer-candidates-less-carbon.html
http://bnarelle.blogspot.com/2007/11/beware-talibank.html
Making Clickable Links
http://code.blogger.com/2007/10/reporting-and-tracking-blogger-api-bugs.html
http://truckhouse.blogspot.com/
http://juicedsportsblog.com/2008/01/im-a-blogger-powered-blog-of-note.html
http://carbonfund.blogspot.com/2008/01/heres-to-fewer-candidates-less-carbon.html
http://bnarelle.blogspot.com/2007/11/beware-talibank.html
Ok, now, I can look. I know a friend that has a blogspot with next and previous.
Note, there is HUGE security problem of just allowing a nitwit techie on the site.
Blogspot, I have tracked down the next to a blogspot feature. It is easy to do on Blogspot, but I am also not on blogspot.
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