Posts in reverse chronological order
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I really don’t understand why wordpress only allows posts to be shown in reverse chronological order. I mean, how hard can it be, with all the features that WordPress already has, to allow chronological order posts? When new visitors come to my blog, I want them to be presented with the story from the beginning, not from the end. Sure, returning visitors will have to go to the most recent posts, but I’m sure that would become second nature to them after visiting a few times.
Alan.
The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)
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Hi Alan.
A blog is, essentially, a reverse chronological publishing tool.
And that’s not from me, but from WordPress.com themselves. If you prefer to publishing in chronological order, there is a way:
http://en.support.wordpress.com/write-a-book/Personally, if I saw a blog in chronological order, I wouldn’t find it too inviting and would probably stop visiting after a couple of times. I figure: why would I go through the hassle of having to browse through old posts in order to get to the most recent ones? But that’s just me.
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Search engines hate stale stuff at the top – most regular visitors (myself included) like new stuff at the top – what if you have 1,000 Posts (as many blogs here do) – how much fun is that to extra click to the end –
By using links in your Posts you can make it easy for visitors to go to the next newer Post if they start not at the most recent.
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@presentlytraveling
Imagine the frustration involved in visiting a site to read the most recent post and finding you will have to to click and click and click and click until you locate their most recent post. Like airodyssey indicates above I would click out never to return again.That being said, if you wish you can create a book-like structure if you wish. See here please > http://en.support.wordpress.com/write-a-book/
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It’s always a balancing act between trying to accommodate someone new to your site and a returning visitor, but like what has been said above, for returning visitors, having the oldest post at the top is not a good idea.
What you can do is to create a “post index” if you wish which will list all your posts on a page (title) and you can put a note above the list telling people that the most recent stuff is at the top. They can then scroll down to find the older stuff if they wish.
Also, 99% of the people coming to your site from a search engine will be coming directly to a single post they found while searching. The font page of my blog gets far fewer visitors than specific single posts.
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I use the Archives short code to provide an index of all posts in my blog on a static page as TSP describes above. If you want to do that as well then here are the entries that are relevant:
http://en.support.wordpress.com/pages/
http://en.support.wordpress.com/archives-shortcode/ -
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Ok, so with the help that you friendly folks provided me with, I’m satisfied with the solution of creating a ‘sticky’ post, as a welcome to my blog, which also gives instructions on how to access all the posts from the beginning in the new ‘archives’ page that I also created. I thank you for your assistance.
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I agree with Presentlytraveling’s question of why. Yes, for the most part, blogs are chronological and we want to see the latest post right away. BUT…what’s right for one blog is not always right for another. There will always be a topic that benefits from reverse chronological order.
Mine, for example.
Mine is a family story blog. It flows and it builds. If someone comes into it mid-stream, they will benefit from clicking into categories and being able to read them in reverse chronological order. Why can’t categories have the option of reversing the order?
Ruling something out just because it doesn’t fit your blog or the way you read sounds like the irritating, old people that say “but that’s not the way we’ve always done it…”
You’re not old, are you? WordPress, where’s your open-minded thinking?
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It’s not ruled out. it’s just that you’ve bought a horse and are expecting it to walk backwards as easily as it walks forwards; that’s a matter of setting expectations reasonably. Horses are made to go forwards, but they can be coaxed into going backwards. Perhaps a crab would work better for you, but you’ve got a horse. What next?
You can make your blog in chronological order by changing the dates of each post. Simple.
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