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Archives
I’m still baffled by how difficult it is to create archives by month, like so many sites have. I understand that it’s possible with rss_suparchive_menu, but a million things have to be lined up just so before it’ll work (non-messy url’s, permalinks, sections, code, etc…), after months of trying i’ve yet to achieve success.
Seems like something that would be easier incorporated into the release…
Yes, I have tried turning it off and on.
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Re: Archives
I SECOND that request!
Archives by month, or year, or week, etc. – should be a ‘built in’ feature that is easily created with forms from within Textpattern.
Last edited by photonomad (2005-09-14 03:45:48)
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Re: Archives
You should remember that TXP is a CMS not blogging software so if you are waiting for something to happen along these lines I wouldn’t hold your breath. :) That’s not to say that it won’t ever happen but it’s probably near the bottom of the pile of “things to do”. In the meantime I removed the rss_suparchive plug-in I was using and coded my archives by hand instead. My archives are “by category” but you can use <code><txp:article_custom /></code> to select by year/month instead to produce monthly archives. Have a read of my write-up and see what you think.
Stuart
In a Time of Universal Deceit
Telling the Truth is Revolutionary.
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Re: Archives
Hard-coding does not necessarily sound so bad… does that mean a separate section AND a separate page for each month, though? That seems a drag…
Yes, I have tried turning it off and on.
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Re: Archives
No. If you follow the article through you will see that all my archive uses a single page template but with multiple article_custom tags and it all sits in it’s own single section. The initial hand coding may take a few minutes but after that you only need to add a new tag each month and as the tags will be identical apart from the date attribute you can copy/paste to your heart’s content. Another plus for hand-coding is that you can split things into pages if you wanted depending on the number of entries there are likely to be, for example you could have separate pages for each year if you needed them. They would still all be in a single section.
Stuart
In a Time of Universal Deceit
Telling the Truth is Revolutionary.
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Re: Archives
Does anybody actually use monthly archives on pages? I don’t mean site authors, I mean website-readers? It always sounded like one of those ideas that is highly popular by writers, but doesn’t really jive with users, like creating overloaded portals and having mini-calendars as a way to navigate to posts. But maybe that’s just me.
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Re: Archives
Well as a user Sencer, when visiting someone else’s site I have to say I find date archives totally useless. I’m really not interested in what someone was writing about last June. If I’m having to search for something then it’s either via the search itself, or more likely categories. I’m always baffled by the way people give the date field an “h#” tag. I mean date archives are fine for “events” sites or “accounts” or something that is truley date-related but otherwise I think they are a waste of space. Probably a fad. A bit like fixed-width designs. :) I take it I’m not alone then.
Last edited by thebombsite (2005-09-15 01:11:59)
Stuart
In a Time of Universal Deceit
Telling the Truth is Revolutionary.
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Re: Archives
Echoing Stuart, I don’t remember ever having a look at archives by date on a site. Categories, sections, any kind of ‘topical’ tag will probably attract my attention much more. Personally, I absolutely don’t see any use for a ‘archive by month’. Heck, even all those calendars with links to recent posts are just clutter to me.
Ofcourse, if a site is dedicated to ‘events’, then we’re talking something else. But even then, I’d first look for categories kind of taxonomy.
Where is that emoji for a solar powered submarine when you need it ?
Sand space – admin theme for Textpattern
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Re: Archives
If there’s absolutely no other way to navigate through an archive, I’ll use date-based navigation. Otherwise I’d rather browse by category or topic, or use a search function. I don’t know of any research on the topic, though.
Last edited by ubernostrum (2005-09-15 03:05:44)
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#10 2005-09-15 03:05:30
- Mary
- Sock Enthusiast
- Registered: 2004-06-27
- Posts: 6,236
Re: Archives
Well, I use them in the event I have to, in other words no other form of archive available to me. Certainly wouldn’t be my first choice though.
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#11 2005-09-15 03:58:08
- Anark
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- Registered: 2004-08-14
- Posts: 101
Re: Archives
Monthly archives are a Blogger legacy: when Blogger came up with permalinks back in 2000, those permalinks pointed to an anchor on an acrchive page that displayed a month’s worth of postings. There were no other archives. Greymatter added single-post archiving, of course, but the default remained Monthly Archives in a front page sidebar. Movable Type honoured the convention and its out-of-the box install put monthly archives in the main page sidebar. Wordpress caught it from Movable Type, and here we are.
I remember reading some information architecture folks sneering at the convention (I don’t have a link though) — but whatever you say against monthly archives, they do provide one-click access off the main page to within reasonably close range of where you want to go.
And people are used to it, they expect it, it’s what they want when they come to Textpattern from Blogger, Movable Type or Wordpress (anecdotal evidence: here’s a guy complaining about lack of monthly archives)
I don’t expect monthly archives will ever make it into the TxP distro as a default, but if somebody could write up a tutorial on how to create monthly archives — never mind the arguments against them — Textpattern might become a much more obvious choice for many bloggers.
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Re: Archives
I made date based archives for my site a long time back. Fancy ones like Dunstan’s blog used to have where you can click on any piece of a date and it would bring up all the posts for that day or month or year. And yeah, I don’t think they were every used by anyone besides myself. I think browsing a site by date has to be one of the most useless ways to go about reading old posts.
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