Should I leave the page as it is now, or should I reformat the opening page so that it only has the current entry (or entries, should there be more than one on a day)?
If you have a thought on the matter, please leave me a comment.
Welcome to Diane Patterson's eclectic blog about what strikes her fancy
Since your entries tend to be fairly long, I would cut down on the number on the main page. I think that just the current entry might be good…
-F
I say leave it as is. It looks great.
I have a particular dislike for the ‘blog format in general. I detest having to scroll down, read down, scroll up, read down, scroll up, etc. It’s annoying. So, I would quite enjoy having just today on the front page. Makes it more journal-like.
Great — I ask this question and then I discover that “all of the entries from the last day on which I made entries” is not that easy to accomplish in Movable Type. (The easy solution is for me to post every single day. I’d rather a more secure solution though.)
I also say leave it as it is. It’s easier to catch up, and easier to post “little entries” along with your big ones. Plus, I love the way the page looks.
I guess I’m used to reading blogs now, but I have no problem with having lots of entries on your page. Looks great, easy to navigate, and with the “recent entries” header I can quickly zip to where I last read.
I also like your cycling subtitle at the top of the page. 🙂
Something else to consider: I like to read the comments people leave. I keep checking the homeschooling entry for new comments. If you only had the current day’s worth of entries on the front page, you’d lose that potential for an ongoing discussion. Maybe for longer entries, you can tuck the bulk of the words onto a new page? That would keep the length of the front page down. You’ve done this for a movie review or two already, haven’t you?
I’m with Jason – I hate the blog format, prefer a more journal-ish format. I like to read the comments too but if they’re attached to each entry, you can still read them that way.
I vote for leaving it as is– I like to be able to catch up on the last few days at a time.
I like the format as is… I can click on the title of the “recent entry” where I want to start and work up. Ideally, if an entry were long, there’d be a little “next” button at the bottom of it to take me to the top of the next one, but it’s not like scrolling up is consuming masses of my energy.
I’m not a particular fan of blog types. I think for my part a notify after each day maybe ? That is one of the reasons I don’t like blogs — people usually don’t notify. Can’t hold anyones nose to the grindstone of one entry a day either. So, a notify with a clickable url would do it for me.
I see Denver Doug, the person who got me to start a notify list. Hi. 🙂
I personally hate weblogs for many reasons. Scrolling down to find the most recent entry and then reading up is counterintuitive. The idea of a “hip” slurred nickname of blog is annoying. Luckily, your writing was always good enough to provoke me so I keep coming back, Diane.
If it’s possible, can you format so the newest entry is at the bottom? Scrolling down makes more sense.
Leave it as is.
As is, please. I hate visiting blogs where only the latest entry is visible, and I usually don’t return. You people who don’t like reading blogs? Don’t read blogs. I’m sorry, but really, you sound like ancients comfortable with your good old scrolls complaining about these here new-fangled codexes. The blog format is excellently adapted to the nature of the thing, and to try to make it look like something else is just silly.
Since this is Movable Type after all, a possible solution is multiple index pages. You can copy the template for this page into a new one and change the MTLastEntries lastn= tag to a number like one or two for those who prefer a shorter first page, and then tell them where to bookmark it.
If journaling and blogging are two separate communities, I guess it will be Diane’s lot to be claimed by both of them.
Considering I did this journal for several years straight one way, changing to a new format probably has thrown a few people.
I’ve decided that for the blog-format page, I will continue to have several days worth of entries and any entry of longer than a few paragraphs will get the MORE treatment.
Having two index pages…hmmm, if they’re automatically generated and it means little to no work for me…
The only problem is with your sidebar links — if you keep them on both templates, you have to update them on both templates.
Or you can move them into what MT calls a “module” — like a server side include, it’s a way to reference the same set of text on multiple pagex. You create them on the same page as where templates are set up at the very bottom, and then include them on other templates with the $MTInclude module= tag.
But other than that, it should require no more ongoing work than you’re doing now. Hope that helps.
THANK YOU! I’d been wondering if there was a way to do “modules” — only I didn’t even know where to start. Yay.