Reading a Blog

[Steve]

Quite a few of the list members keep a blog, I do when on cruises. All the blogs I have seen are set up to read "last entry first" which is fine if they are beiing read on a day to day basis to keep up with a trip in progress.
But, if one wants to read a "not yet read yet" blog they require lots of page shifting as they are posted back to front.
Anyone know of a setting to temporarily rearange a blog for reading in chronological order?
Thanks for any information.

 

[Great Laker]

Steve,

I can't answer your question and would like to know if this is possible as well.

What I did as a partial solution was add a widget that puts a blog archive in the right column so someone can go back to the start from there. They still have to read bottom up, however. Not the best solution.

Adventures of Great Laker

 

[Delia Rosa]

Steve,

I can't answer your question and would like to know if this is possible as well.

What I did as a partial solution was add a widget that puts a blog archive in the right column so someone can go back to the start from there. They still have to read bottom up, however. Not the best solution.

Adventures of Great Laker

Your widget worked perfectly... I just finished reading all of your entries from start to finish... just waiting now for your next installments!

 

[Rusty]

We have an "archive" section on our blog, but it lacks the fancy little pull down arrows. I'll have to rummage around and see if there is a wordpress plugin that does that.

In wordpress, there should be a next/previous link at the top of each blog post. You can go forward or backward through the entries using that.

 

[Great Laker]

Rusty,

Blogspot has the "previous posts" button as well, however, I have almost 200 posts and at seven or so a page, it would take about 30 button pushes to get back to the beginning! Plus, then you have to scroll to the bottom of each group, read down the first post, and then scroll up to the next post, read down it, and scroll up again. Not a good process.

This is why Steve is asking for some way to "invert" the entire blog order.

 

[Island Explorer]

Adding a blog archive on google:
On googles blogspot, sign in, go to blogger; there is a drop down menu at the arrow to the right of the orange pen (to create a new post)

At the drop down menu, click on layout. Add a gadget, choose Blog Archive. One of the options is to show the oldest post first. If you have regular blog followers, they won't like it, because in order to tell if you have a new post, they have to go to the archives. That is a good way to lose your followers. The folks who like your blog can read from the bottom up when you set up the archive.

MERCY
www.mercyafloat.com
http://trawleradventures.blogspot.com/

 

[Sceptic]

A non blogger thoughts on blogs

Great Laker

I found your blog from the post you made here. The widget ( whatever that is ) made it easy to go back and read from the start of your trip. Nice job. Good writing and a interesting read. I had intended to invite you to stay a day or two at our dock on the ICW but you have already gone past us. Spent a pleasurable hour or two reading about your trip.

Rusty

It is not hard at all to get to the beginning of your blog. I read a few entries but I haven’t had time yet to read much, but I will.

I’ve read a lot of boat blogs in the last few months, since I’m kinda laid up with some medical issues at the moment.

Mikes' rules for boat bloggers -

1. I don’t care what you had for dinner, unless you caught it yourself.

2. I like to hear about where you anchored.

3. I like to hear about the marinas you stayed in, and what you thought of them. Yeah there is AC, but you can be more subjective on your own blog.

4.I like to hear about problems you encountered along the way, and how, and who helped you solve them.

5. Write you blog for your intended audience, most likely your children, and friends, not so much for a stranger like me. Still, I guess most authors like to be read, so remember there are some readers out there like me.

6. Pictures!

This advice is worth what you paid for it.

Some blogs of note -

Sterling Kennedy, who I know in real life blogs about his two completed loops, told almost entirely in pictures here. Click on the links for the different loops.

Joe Pica, who I also know in real life, has also done the loop twice, as well as 920 miles up the Ohio, and another 175 miles up the Monongahela Carolyn Ann

Next to Me is about a Seattle couple who bought a east coast boat to do the loop. They are near the finish line and will likely sell their Jefferson 43 and return home. It’s well written and worth a read.

Swing Set is about a couple who retired from the “beer factory” in St. Louis ( I think we all know who that is) and sold everything before cruising on their SeaRay 46 Sedan Bridge at 8 knots. Interesting guy, with a sharp view of the world around him. Swing Set

Mike

 

[twistedtree]

I found another way to address the blog ordering problem. The issue as I see it, is that when you first drop into a blog, you want to see the latest post, which suggests the post be listed in reverse chronological order.

But if you want to read a partcular section of a blog, you want to read it chronologically. That means that for each page you read, you need to scroll to the bottom and read each section one at a time backwards. What a pain.

The best solution I've come up with so far on Blogger is as follows:

- As mentioned earlier, include the Archive gadget/widget which gives a listing of all the posts. I like the "hierarchical" view since it collapses the list to keep it small, and only expands out the part you care about. I also like to sort the archive such that it reads in chronological order, not reverse, i.e. oldest post first. That way the archive also reads as a chronology of your travels.

- Then, to solve the problem of the ordering of the posts themselves, I change the post settings to only display a single post, not 7 which is the default.

With all this, anytime you open the blog you automatically get the latest post. If you want to work backwards, you just click the Older Post" button.

If you want to read a section of the blog, like a particular trip, you go find the beginning in the Archive and click on it to read the first post. Then you just keep clicking Newer Post to advance to the next post until you get tired and want to go do something else. I think it solves the problem pretty well.

On Wordpress, I couldn't find a way to do this. Out of the box WP has almost no configuration options, and least none compared to Blogger. You can't control the sort order of the "Archive" list. And you can't control the number of posts shown at any given time. And I don't see the Older Post and Newer Post buttons, but that may be because I don't have enough posts. Anyway, I tried Wordpress and ran away screaming and went back to Blogger. I imagine that if you are willing to rummage through all the amateur written widgets and plugins you could make much of this work, but I'm not up for dumpster diving.

 

[OneofSix]

I am with you, Mike (aka Skeptic). I enjoy reading several of the blogs you mentioned. Humor. Problems/Solutions. Pictures. If I read one more blog about ... shopping and eating at restaurants .... ugh!

I am looking at the different blog sites to see which one I like the best. I appreciate the archive system - date with description - so that after I get hooked on the blog, I can pick and choose what date/topic to read.

I am in the process of trying them out with "test" blogs. I like reading "blog spots" generally over wordpress blogs. That may be due more to style than format.

BTW- other than blogger and wordpress, are there another interesting blogging websites you have found? Anyone use "mytripjournal" at "mytripjournal.com"??

 

[Steve]

It seems to me that ideally the blog of one's current trip would be posted last entry on top so followers could read the latest entry quickly.
But the previous year's entries, or concluded trips, could be sorted to read chronologically.
Maybe that is asking a lot from a service that is free.

 

[Capn Chuck]

You can go back in and change older posts to read in the correct order. You will have to go in and change the dates posted so the order is correct. Don't duplicate any dates and use whatever you want. Then they display properly in the blog. On current cruises, leave them as they are until the cruise is over. Not perfect but it works and one day I may do that with ours. Chuck