Importance of Archives
Wednesday, May 2, 2007
There are few things I harp on when it comes to blogging. Most of the obvious things (spelling, readability, etc) are obvious to everyone else. One thing that is not obvious to most people however are archives.
Since blogging took off in 2000, thanks mostly to the popularity of Blogger skyrocketing, archives have been around. Blogger has always presented archives in the following manner:
Display a list of the months with a year and then on that page display all the posts for that month. We will get to why I prefer this method the best later on.
Other sites have gone their own route with how archives should be presented. Some sites just list each post in a numerical order. Other sites use an "older posts" link on the front page. And other sites use variations on the calendar method. I will explain each of these, and why they are all bad.
Lets start off with the absolute worst idea ever for displaying archives - the calendar method. This method puts a small calendar on the site listing all of the days of the month. Days that have a post are typically in bold and are clickable. While this seems like a great idea, it isn't. Because what if you want to go to a different month? Well then you click the little arrow left or right and switch to that month. But what if the site has been around for a while and has over 2 years worth of archives? See the problem? No?
Ok what is so bad about this is that as of writing this, the date is May of 2007. Now imagine if I wanted to find the very first post. I don't know how long the site has been around, nor do I know the day it was created. Sure I could look up a domain registration, but that doesn't always work. So lets say that the first post happened on February 3rd, 2004. Now I would have to cycle through all the months to get to February of 04 and then click on the date. See the time involved? Blogging is about reading, not about clicking your way through.
The next worst culprit is the page of "every single post" listed in some way. Typically this list is sorted by date written in a descending order (meaning today is at the top, first post ever at the bottom). Other times it is the other way around. And sometimes, you will see the posts listed alphabetically. Alphabetically is only helpful if you remember that the post had a title of say "Raising money for softball". But even if the posts are listed by date, it is still a pain to always click the back button after reading each post. I guess you could open each link in a new tab, but blogs read like books. They all have a flow. Interrupting this flow is not a good thing.
The one archive system which isn't too bad compared to the previous two is the "older posts" link at the bottom of a page. Typically an author will have 10-20 posts on one page and then when you click this older posts link it takes you to the next 10-20 posts. The downside to this is that what if you want to go to a specific date? It is kind of hard to do that when you are only getting 10 posts per page and you don't even know where it is as far as previous posts is concerned.
Which leads me to the best method. Having a link for a month/year and then that page containing every post. This makes it very easy to find a specific post and locate the beginning of a blog. Say a blog has a football theme to it and you are curious about this person's thoughts on the game that happened in the 3rd week of September. Easy, just go to September and then scroll down till you find the post about that game.
One thing I will also mention is that as an added bonus to the monthly archives you should have individual page archives. Sure you could have anchor links within the month and be able to link directly to that post, but individual pages are a great thing for Google. They will help your site get noticed faster, and then if you have an important post that gets digged, it will be a direct link.
Since blogging took off in 2000, thanks mostly to the popularity of Blogger skyrocketing, archives have been around. Blogger has always presented archives in the following manner:
Display a list of the months with a year and then on that page display all the posts for that month. We will get to why I prefer this method the best later on.
Other sites have gone their own route with how archives should be presented. Some sites just list each post in a numerical order. Other sites use an "older posts" link on the front page. And other sites use variations on the calendar method. I will explain each of these, and why they are all bad.
Lets start off with the absolute worst idea ever for displaying archives - the calendar method. This method puts a small calendar on the site listing all of the days of the month. Days that have a post are typically in bold and are clickable. While this seems like a great idea, it isn't. Because what if you want to go to a different month? Well then you click the little arrow left or right and switch to that month. But what if the site has been around for a while and has over 2 years worth of archives? See the problem? No?
Ok what is so bad about this is that as of writing this, the date is May of 2007. Now imagine if I wanted to find the very first post. I don't know how long the site has been around, nor do I know the day it was created. Sure I could look up a domain registration, but that doesn't always work. So lets say that the first post happened on February 3rd, 2004. Now I would have to cycle through all the months to get to February of 04 and then click on the date. See the time involved? Blogging is about reading, not about clicking your way through.
The next worst culprit is the page of "every single post" listed in some way. Typically this list is sorted by date written in a descending order (meaning today is at the top, first post ever at the bottom). Other times it is the other way around. And sometimes, you will see the posts listed alphabetically. Alphabetically is only helpful if you remember that the post had a title of say "Raising money for softball". But even if the posts are listed by date, it is still a pain to always click the back button after reading each post. I guess you could open each link in a new tab, but blogs read like books. They all have a flow. Interrupting this flow is not a good thing.
The one archive system which isn't too bad compared to the previous two is the "older posts" link at the bottom of a page. Typically an author will have 10-20 posts on one page and then when you click this older posts link it takes you to the next 10-20 posts. The downside to this is that what if you want to go to a specific date? It is kind of hard to do that when you are only getting 10 posts per page and you don't even know where it is as far as previous posts is concerned.
Which leads me to the best method. Having a link for a month/year and then that page containing every post. This makes it very easy to find a specific post and locate the beginning of a blog. Say a blog has a football theme to it and you are curious about this person's thoughts on the game that happened in the 3rd week of September. Easy, just go to September and then scroll down till you find the post about that game.
One thing I will also mention is that as an added bonus to the monthly archives you should have individual page archives. Sure you could have anchor links within the month and be able to link directly to that post, but individual pages are a great thing for Google. They will help your site get noticed faster, and then if you have an important post that gets digged, it will be a direct link.