Posts won’t load in reverse chronological order?

  • Unknown's avatar

    Hi Guys. Hoping someone can help me. I have a blog where new posts appear last in the post order on the home page and I’m wanting them to appear first. I can’t work out what the problem is? I’ve tried a few templates but the same thing seems to happen. I hope someone can help me out? Thanks.

    The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)

  • Unknown's avatar
  • Unknown's avatar

    I’m sorry but you’re in the wrong forum. This is for blogs hosted at wordpress.com. Self-hosted blogs are supported at wordpress.org/support.

    https://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/please-read-me-first-before-posting?replies=1

  • Unknown's avatar

    Hi Ellaella, thanks so much, I didn’t realise :) Cheers. Mel.

  • Unknown's avatar

    Not a problem. Happy blogging.

  • Unknown's avatar

    I am having the same problem as ellaella but on a wordpress hosted blog seen here; http://feminismfriday.wordpress.com/ – Can someone please help?!

  • Unknown's avatar

    Sorry I see that ellaella is the responder… same problem as photographycampus, can you help ellaella?

  • Unknown's avatar

    Your problem is probably that you have posts set as Sticky. This is designed to interfere with the reverse chronological posting. Un-sticky those posts.

  • Unknown's avatar

    @feminismfriday: ? You only have two posts, and they are in reverse chronological order: Both May 13, 1:33 PM above, 12:37 PM below.

  • Unknown's avatar

    Hallo.

    I am thinking of starting a blog here, but it looks as if I may have the exact *opposite* problem: I want posts to appear in forward order, *not* reverse order, which I find extremely irritating. Since the problem this thread began with is probably a one-off mishap, I expect that, if I start, the reverse order will apply.
    Can anyone please tell me if it is possible to configure one’s own blog to show posts in forward order? After all, a book or a diary is not printed with the last chapter or entry coming first, then the second-last, and so on, ending with the first. Before reading an item, I like to first read earlier ones which the later one may depend on logically, or continue from.
    I will not start my blog here if there is no way of doing this, as I find the reverse ordering quite perverse. (Making every post sticky doesn’t seem to me to be an elegant or efficient solution.)

    Also, is it possible to indent the first line of each paragraph? – another thing that many Internet sites make just about impossible.

    I would appreciate any suggestions on these matters.
    Thank you.

    Regards, Michael.

  • Unknown's avatar

    There is no way to change the order of posts here at wordpress.COM. They are in reverse chronological order.

  • Unknown's avatar

    Just my feeling, but I find having posts chronological is a pain in the butt for visitors since in general we have to page down through tons of posts in order to get to the latest post (unless there are links to all the different pages at the bottom of the main page). Not everyone coming to a blog is coming there for the first time and will want to read from the beginning to the end. There are a couple blogs I visit infrequently that are chronological and I absolutely detest having to page around to try and find what I have not read and that is the main reason I visit infrequently.

    You have your reasons though and I’m not here to change your mind.

    Regarding the indent for the first line on paragraphs, there is no “quick” way to do it. You would have to write the HTML for that at the beginning of each paragraph.

  • Unknown's avatar

    Thanks, thesacredpath, for your information.
    I’m afraid your information that it is not possible to have forward order on WordPress makes it unsuitable for me. It is to be hoped that those who run it may consider adding this option at some future time.
    You mentioned that you knew of a couple of blogs that use forwards order. Would you mind telling me, please, which they are? – I have (on and off) been trying to find one for several years. You won’t be losing a customer for WordPress in so doing, because I am not going to become one anyway.
    You may find it irritating to have to scroll down to find the most recent post; but that could be solved by providing a prominent link to the most recent post (the bottom of the most recent page). But on the other hand, the reverse ordering is extremely irritating for anyone who wishes to read things in order, which may be important if there are logical or narrative connections between entries (entry B referring to something discussed previously in entry A, for instance). Regardless of the ordering used, I would think a well-planned blog would contain plenty of links to the various places readers might most often want to go to, anyway.
    Anyway, it would be much appreciated if you could please guide me to any forward blogs you know of, and perhaps save me huge amounts of time in trying to find one.
    Thank you.

    Regards, Michael.

  • Unknown's avatar

    Well, it IS possible, but you have to change the date of every single post every time you make one so that they appear to be in chronological order. You may want to refer to this thread http://support.wordpress.com/write-a-book/

    I haven’t seen a blog like that in easily eight years.

  • Unknown's avatar

    I have so many blogs bookmarked that it would take quite some time for me to figure out which ones they are. I haven’t visited them in nearly a year I don’t think.

    If you self-host your blog using the software from wordpress.ORG, there is a plugin that allows you to change the order of the posts called postmash. It requires that you edit one of the theme PHP script files and add some PHP code, but after that you can order your posts as you see fit from a control panel in the dashboard.

  • Unknown's avatar

    @mje54:

    – Making every post sticky has nothing to do with what you’re looking for. The sticky option is designed for one or maybe two permanent posts. If you make every post a sticky, you will simply mess up the blog: stickies override the number of posts per page, and above a certain number they’ll be out of order, also show up in more than one pages.

    – The main posts page displays posts in reverse chronological order: most recent first. That’s the way blogs are designed, and you can’t change that in wp.com. So:

    One way of changing the order is changing the dates. (You can even make the dates not show up at all: Settings > General > Date Format > Custom > write a punctuation mark > save.)

    Another way is by not having a main posts page. You create a page, set it as your front (Settings > Reading), and add appropriate widgets, titles and categories. This way visitors will only be able to access individual posts via the sidebar, in the order you show them.

    – All kinds of formatting are possible via html (in the html post editor). For first-line indentation, you write your paragraphs like that:
    <p style="text-indent:.4in;">TEXT_HERE</p>

  • Unknown's avatar

    Thanks for the suggestions made by several people. Some of the solutions mentioned don’t really sound practical to me, such as re-dating every post every time a new post is made, or making all sticky, and it isn’t really what I was after. And I don’t want to obscure the date a post is made.
    The software with wordpress.org sounds the best solution, although I don’t really understand it – it sounds rather complicated.
    I’m not sure about not having a main posts page. That could be complicated too (although I don’t quite understand how that works, either).
    I was actually hoping that someone would tell me there is a configuration setting you can change, and have it all go in forwards order, but otherwise it just works normally. I just can’t get past the idea that posting things in reverse is completely insane and very irritating. Who reads a book from the last chapter, working backwards? So why should one do it here? If you want to read several posts, surely most people would want to do so in proper order (indeed this may be required if some posts refer to previous ones), and having to scroll up each time just seems perverse. If some posts are longer than one screen, then it’s even worse: you have to scroll up, then down, then up, then down, and so on.
    I am completely baffled why this has become the normal method, because it is something I could not live with in anything I wrote myself, and I find it irritating to have to deal with when I read other sides written in reverse.
    Anyway, thanks for the suggestions; but it sounds like WordPress is not right for me. If I want to write my own blog, I will just have to write it in H.T.M.L. myself, arranging how I want, sooner than using a specialized blog site. I believe software should enable authors to arrange their work how they please, not dictate to them how it should be arranged. It all seems the wrong way around to me: software dictating to users how things should be, rather than users telling the software how to do it.

    Regards, Michael.

  • Unknown's avatar

    The thing is that the bulk of people who return to a blog just want to see what is new, and they don’t want to have to do a bunch of clicking around to see it. That is certainly the case for me, and I know it is for most others as well. Also, reverse chronological order is the way everyone is used to seeing a blog since that is the way that it has always been. If you throw chronological order in there on them, and they do not take a few extra seconds to determine that that is what you have done (see next paragraph), they are going to see that old date on that top post, and figure that it is a dead blog and click away.

    With each passing year, the attention span of people on the internet shortens and they are less and less patient with having to do more than a few clicks to find something.

  • Unknown's avatar

    @thesacredpath: Thanks for the postmash plugin… iam trying to work it out in my self hosted blog. BTW i find the conversation in this thread very funny :-)

    Destination Infinity

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